Quick update about balancing in a beta test. It might be unsurprising but it should give you some context. Apologies for the quick and dirty recording!

Keep cooking guys your game is peak. Ngl probably my favorite developers ever. Actual gamers very transparent, and honest! Thank you for Warddogs!!

Appreciated, but this is called the honeymoon period mate :)

This aint no honeymoon phase 🤣🤣 im getting all my boys on wardogs this gonna be a game we play for a long time! Been waiting for a set of devs to actually give a fuck about there game so thank you

Great to hear! This was really my only concern with the game and kinda assumed this was the case since you'd want people to experience a lot of the content the game had to offer. Thanks for addressing this!

Epic, thats good to know! Will slow down the sudden spike of tanks we had for sure + allow more people to get used to all vehicles at slower pace which will feel a lot more natural

This is what I originally believed as well. I do wonder though, was the progression speed in-general sped up, or just the example you gave? (About the tank)

Loads of things are sped up. The initial first 20 levels is pretty accurate, but originally you didn’t get the AK for like 7 levels, but we think we’re going to keep that. We’ll change it every season to keep it fresh

@Talo_Hex How do you guys feel about SMGs rn

Hard to say, what we’ve seen across a season is things peak and fall. So something can be OP for a few days but then be useless late season.. a good example is shotguns, I highly recommend taking shotgun day 1 game 1, nobody has armour and you can get range kills easily and progress support quickly.. but later in the game it becomes much less effective, certainly against level 3 and 4 armour. The same is applicable to SMG’s. They have their place and it’s in the hot zone. But if you start ranging with them at 60/70m+ they become somewhat “meh”. Especially as high tier armour comes in.

I think that's a pretty good way to look at it. We haven't seen late game yet really, and depending on balancing, things will stretch their use cases. Tarkov is very similar in this sense, some guns and ammo types are more useful to be thrown at enemies past a certain point in the season/wipe

Love it when you raw dog us with WARDOGS info! Will we be able to party up with our friends and load into the same servers together?

In the future yes, but it creates a lot of bugs and because we need to build a system that ties to console we thought we’d wait.. as annoying as it is. However, if you join a server, create a squad and then friends join you via Steam it will bring them into the server, team, and squad.

Yall don't have individual user IDs? Like Steam user ID 123 -> WARDOGS ID 001, or something like that? Then it would be system agnostic and you group internally, not via Steam or console.

@Brammflakes Having a primary key (internal id) is a default in almost every database. This isn't the source of complexity at all

@Brammflakes A lot of games use the Steam ID to track as the internal ID, as opposed to translating the Steam ID to an internal one

@Brammflakes Their developers know that they are doing. If you think this design decision somehow gets rid of all the major problems of friends/squads matchmaking, this ain't it (let alone this is the least significant part, and the most obvious thing to do when you have 3rd party ids)

@Brammflakes For sure, I have a ton of faith in the wardogs team 😌 just offering my unsolicited 2 cents as one does on Twitter/X

is there any chance heli pilots or tank drivers could get earplugs or something to dampen the sound 🙏

How soon can we fly little birds at launch? That’s all I need to know

Does the class progression also wipe each season? Can the first sniper get a buff? No iffense but that was probably the most usless gun in any game i have ever played.

By design. It stops people getting the Mosin too quickly. Not every gun has to be good, it’s cheap..

@Thanos95375753 i like the first sniper just wish i could have got to the better scopes

@Brammflakes The first 6x scope os the best scope tho

@Brammflakes if you wanna sit in a tower and plink at people sure, but thats boring to me

@Brammflakes 6x scope has the fastest ads time making it viable in close quarters if ur good enough

@Brammflakes oh yea, lemme go quickscope people like its fucking cod lmao

@Brammflakes I dont think ur good enough to do that sry

This makes so much more sense now

A question for you! In my most recent video I showed how you mentioned season 1 specifically is a month. Is season 1 going to have its own limited season 1 only 30 gold bar skin?? Will it be adjusted to cost less? 30 bars in a month + unlocks is crazy. Good update on progression!

@HowardPhilpott can probably answer this one.

@RealGirlFart26 We meet again RealGirlFart26. Intention was to offer ONE item to be an optional goal per season, a real 'I was there' unlock that makes you go 'oh shit this guy grinded S1' when you see or loot it. Rest of the gold market unlocks will be additive and persist across seasons.

@RealGirlFart26 I will also say this intent was pre first season length / gold bar cost decision. So we'll be watching % of players who reach that goal. It's intended to be a high investment unlock giving meaning to owning it, which means not everyone will get to own it. Optional grind :)

@Brammflakes Thank you Howard. I will be foregoing showers from September 10th to October 10th.

Nice to have a game developer that touches grass.

That's great news. Also, please don't knee jerk any balance changes because of loud players. I am certain you guys have played the game for so many more hours than we have. Be confident in your balance, and give us all time to learn the meta, including how to deal with things like choppers and arty. Nothing hurts a game more than a lack of confidence in decisions made before going public. Of course make changes where you've discovered something unintended, but try to stick to your vision, don't doubt yourselves. Don't screw with the ttk or weapon dps/recoils unless it's genuinely warranted.

Joe, please don't specifically listen to YouTubers. They are a minority of the player base and are surrounded by echo chambers. Please don't change the game for them.

Not saying yall are, BUT if there is an open beta. Can we PLEASE get progression to transfer over to the early access? Plzzzzz?!?

Well FUCK

Would love if tanks could be locked to 1st person view only. The 3rd-person-god-view for the driver makes C4'ing them basically impossible. (I say that as a tank driver, not as somebody that tried to C4 them). Would be great to see as a balance update for release!

Given that the alpha/beta were condensed. How much of a difference will the grind be for EA?

I do still think the armor of the tank could use another look, unless a completey rear shot the RPG had a super low pen rate, even against the sides. I'm fine with the front being immune to launchers but at least give us better odds on the sides.

High intensity damage zones exist but they’re really badly communicated. Tank gameplay and vehicle gunplay is not something we are proud of in wardogs but it “works”. Something we’d like to improve

That is good to hear. I even had a 155 arty shell tink on the side of a tanks roof, its good to know the team is aware that its not where it supposed to be. With the weight of the launchers/ammo being so high, them feeling near useless against tanks in most cases felt horrible.

Ok that came out wrong, its good to know the team feels like its not where its supposed to be*

Any thoughts on snipers?

Yeh, they’re fine. Early season people get our equivalent of gear fear.. they start using the SKS early season and we end up with the feeling of a lot of snipers. But it fades as other toys enter the sandbox and people don’t want to progress the sniper any further because it’s not versatile enough. Annoying early days, fades with time. But hey, you sometimes get sniper heavy games for sure. Other maps take this into account and this map is by far the most sniper dominant map.

Awesome. Thanks for that. It was def maddening at times and then I just went Sniper myself to counter 🤣

Top Tip: Suppression can be quite punishing in Wardogs. Bullet suppression increases by two things 1. Calibre Size - how big the bullet is.. bigger, more suppression per bullet 2. It's additive, if you shoot 1 bullet that does 10 suppression shoot another, it compounds to 20 suppression for example. What this means is.. stop trying to kill snipers, force them away. Suppress... if a sniper is hitting you from a general direction, fire 3-6 round bursts at them, their zoomed in scope will shake like mad and they'll have to hide. Don't try and fight them unless you're confident, suppress them, move them along, or suppress and rush them.

@RichGinter Is the scope shake the only affect of suppression or are there others

@RichGinter Chrom ab/fov shifting etc.

Can you do something about the “potato mode “ I have a 5080 and there was no reason to use high graphics if that low level existed the high visibility of players is much better and basically makes game abit of a cheese , you should limit it too certain graphics cards if possible.

wait then how the hell did unlocking the havoc take us 20 hours of straight grinding if it was supposed to be quick D:

Oh thank god

Probably what had alot of people thinking and answered alot of questions about the progression.I hit lvl107 rank on a weekend is diabolical and the fact that I now know that it was just so everyone can enjoy the features in a week gets me even more hyped to truly grind for things

It makes sense. Thanks for the video

Hi Joe, please don't let the infantry players get to you. A tank is a tank. A jet is a jet, and a helicopter is a helicopter. If all this is too much for the pure infantry players, they should play Counter-Strike. I'm sick of hearing them whine.

Will we be getting a roadmap?

Do you think having so many armor and bullet types could make the consistency from gunfight to gunfight less readable?

I was very curious about this exact topic. Hell yes. This makes me happy. The progression felt fast in the playtest. I’m happy this won’t be the case at EA release.

@damnitbennett Complete common sense. Allowed players to get a taste of the good stuff

I don't mind more of a grind to get to the really good stuff, however if the seasons are only a month long and I have to re-grind for everything I won't be a fan of at all.

There’s been a lot of dialogue over the past few weeks about potato mode giving ridiculous advantages by removing shadows and foliage. Why are Bulkhead dumbing down their game so that people who are reluctant to upgrade 10+ year old hardware can play at 30 fps?

This makes sense. I'm excited to see the full package. I know not everything was as it is supposed to be in the alpha and beta. Thanks for the update!

I never comment on videos. Heck, this is an alt because my main got hacked. Anyway…you guys have done a stellar job between marketing, communication and managing your expectations. I love your work ethic, support your product and I purchased Wardogs. Thank you!

This is huge! Slower progression is going to be nice

Would love to see a voice chat with just squad leaders for better team coordination. It’s not as invasive as having an actual commander but would still add some cohesion I felt was missing in the beta

Good, the grind is what keeps it interesting, at least for me. Would be cool if we would get some sort of "service stars" or "mastery level" for vehicles / guns at some point, adds another nice layer to the progression, even if its just a cosmetic star number or whatever