This is a summary of the biggest changes over the last few months. A few of these features have been live for a while, but I hadn't made a Steam announcement for them yet. If you've played the game recently you might have seen some of these, but if not, here's what's new in the world of GSA!

Explosive Boxes
There are fun new ways to kill people.

Some of the loot crates are now shown in red. These are explosive and will deal 60hp damage to anyone nearby, including yourself! If you want to claim the loot inside them you should shoot them from afar first, as running into them to open the crate will hurt. They crates also deal extra damage vs vehicles and are a great way to initiate a fight!

Car Physics Kills
Even cooler, when cars explode the car body will now blast forwards out of the explosion.

The car will deal huge roadkill damage as it slides across the ground, killing anyone caught in it's path. So now you can set traps by parking cars in chokepoints. I like to drive a car up to an incoming supply drop where I know a lot of enemies will be, and then pull off trick shots like these.

Pretty Graphics
Various parts of the game look better. The lighting is more vibrant and colourful. The circle of death is easier to see as it now has a little row of dots showing its edge.

The Uranium Shop
Players can now finally spend their Uranium! If you have or buy the Deluxe Edition DLC, you will get a bonus 3000 uranium, but everyone can also earn uranium for free. Daily challenges, leveling up, and opening flasks all give uranium, which you can spend in the new shop.

The shop displays new offers every day, selling things like ACID, Magnets, direct DNA purchases and various Flasks. Most popular are the class-specific flasks, which guarantee Epic or Legendary drops for your favourite classes.

Uranium makes account progression more strategic and gives you more control over how your account progresses. You can even wishlist your favorite skills by right clicking on them, and they will appear in the shop more often, allowing you to buy DNA directly on your favorite skills and classes.

Progression & Flasks Streamlined
The new progression system has seen many improvements since it was released 5 months ago. Huge thanks to all the Early Access testers who gave feedback on this!

Flasks are more convenient to claim as there are no longer any inventory limits. You can stack flasks infinitely.

You have the option to convert regular class flasks into Epic flasks. This means that flasks for the classes you don't play are no longer useless. You can turn them into Epics which are always useful.

The flask animation got a lot of criticism for being too slow, so that has been sped up 2x faster. And there is also a new "QUICK MIX" option that removes the animation entirely (except for when an Epic or Legendary is about to pop out).

Automatic Skill Builds
The recently added skill builds got a huge improvement due to the new "Auto Build" feature.

By clicking the AUTO button the game will automatically assign 12 skills to your build for you. It chooses these skills based on 3 factors. The rarity of the skill, hardcoded synergies that I know work well with that specific class, and most importantly, your personal skill usage.

The game will track how much you use each skill based on your "votes" when you click the skills during drafting in-game. Then based on this information it creates a build that prioritizes your favourite skills. It works pretty well, and is convenient for new players who aren't sure what skills they like yet.

New Survivor Income Loot Drops
The survivor income is the biggest source of XP in the game. This is a battle royale after all, and survival needs to matter. But it used to work in a fairly confusing way. Now it works like this:

Roughly once per minute, every survivor in the game will receive a special supply crate that lands right next to them. This contains a huge amount of XP, far more than you will get from other sources like cops, missions or kills. Only survivors get this though, not zombies. So if you want to farm up and become as strong as possible for the round 3 showdown, you need to stay alive!

This mechanic is more visual and intutive to new players. But it also adds interesting gameplay considerations for veterans. You get a 3 second warning before your box drops, which gives you just enough time to get to safety to claim it. You can also claim other player's income boxes, if you can somehow kill them before they claim it. The semi-random nature of the drops means you never know when it will come, and so when you hear the warning beeps you have to think fast to ensure you successfully claim this huge source of farm.

Random Class Options
You can now select a random class before you join a match. This gives you a subtle +10% XP boost, to compensate for the fact that you aren't able to counter of use your best class. This is in the rougelitey spirit of the game, and rewards players who have mastered every class. There's also a "Random Everything" mode, which also will not only randomise your class, but also your skill build too. Since this feature was added about 25% of players have been using it, from the looks of the leaderboards.

Hundreds of Tweaks to Skills, Classes and Mechanics
There are too many micro tweaks to list here, but they're all listed in the changelogs in game. Here are some of the highlights though:

- Added a new Kill Frenzy loot pickup, inspired by GTA2. This triggers a mission where you have 30s to kill 5 enemies.
- Added a new DOUBLE DAMAGE loot pickup, also inspired by GTA2. Collecting this gives you double damage for the next 3 seconds. It's good to camp one of these and wait for an unsuspecting victim to come nearby.
- New loot crates are randomly hidden on rooftops, encouraging exploration and rewarding players who know how to do parkour.
- Killing enemies now gives cash and XP based on your kill streak. $100 and 10xp per streak. So if you kill your 8th player without dying, it gives $800 and 80xp. This rewards survival, and puts a big focus on quality instead of quantity kills.
- Added a camera zoom option, which lets you zoom the camera out to see your surroundings better.
- Scoring is reworked. It is now based entirely on placement of each round, with later rounds giving more score. Your level or kills now have no impact on your score. This is important as it frees you up to just focus on the survival and build optimisation, instead of feeling the need to constantly grind kills to keep up.
- Free to Play players can now play all the survival mode difficulty modifiers. This allows them to compete with Deluxe DLC players on the daily leaderboards for top score.
- Boxes cast line of sight shadows more aggressively, creating more line of sight blockers in the map. We used to be able to see over a 5m tall box, but now we can't. Creating more interesting gameplay fighting around these.
- Too many class and skill balances to list here. Check the changelog in game!

The next major feature will be a literal game-changing new "round modifiers" system. How will it work?

In a match of Gene Shift Auto, there are 3 rounds, lasting 5 minutes each. Soon, each of these rounds will have a special modifier or minigame activated during it. I will create a bunch of these modifiers, but only one will be active at a time. Some ideas I'm thinking of are:

- The Floor is Lava! Areas of the map turn to fire, changing how we move about.
- Meteor Strike! Meteors will randomly fall from the sky, giving 2s warning before hitting the ground.
- Turbo Guns! Everyone will fire bullets +50% faster.
- Spinning Saws! Giant saws will spin at various chokepoints in the map, requiring timing to get through. Just like dungeon crawling in Skyrim.

Each round, a new random modifier will be chosen. This will add huge amounts of variety and replayability, and really lean into the roguelitey vibes too. Players will need to adapt to the changing situation if they want to survive and farm as well as possible.

Even cooler is how these modifiers are chosen. They are chosen semi-randomly, but importantly they will ultimately be decided by the winner of the previous round. If you win round 1, then you'll be the one who decides what modifier is active in round 2! This seems super fun to me. The stakes for winning rounds 1 and 2 will become huge, knowing that you'll be deciding the gameplay for everyone else in the server next round. Getting to choose also will have subtle gameplay advantages, as you might be able to choose a modifier that you are especially good at, or that synergises nicely with your build.

Anyway, this will be released in a couple of months, so stay tuned!

Cheers,
Ben (bencelot).