Patch Notes 0.9.5

“Resurrection” and “Ghosts”

• Players now resurrect upon death!

  • Each player has 1 extra life (lambs and wolves)

  • If you attempt to kill a teammate, you will not respawn

  • Respawning returns you to your guestroom, or to a random location in the harbor if the gate has been opened

• All items, XP, gold, passives, and clues persist through resurrection

• The player status at the bottom left of the HUD now shows how many respawns you have remaining under your health bar

• After dying, players temporarily become a Ghost that can interact with clues, create ghostly signals, and talk to nearby ghosts

  • Your Ghost rises directly out of your dead body after death

  • Ghost form lasts for 45 seconds, after which you respawn fully in your guest room or in the harbor

  • Living players can briefly see flashes of ghosts when they interact with the world, such as when inspecting, concealing, or opening doors

• You cannot use items or passives while in ghost form

• After 45 seconds, dead bodies become chalk outlines that can no longer be looted and do not show the identity of the victim

  • Chalk outlines can still be inspected or concealed for clues as usual

  • This is to give wolves some opportunity to remain unrevealed even if they are committing kills, provided they are playing stealthily.

• The elimination menu no longer shows your killer's identity if you are going to respawn

• Body found messages no longer reveal the victim's identity

Resurrection – a feature in the works for a while. There are several objectives behind allowing players to resurrect once after death:

1. Allowing players to still feel in the match even if they get killed

2. Allowing players to make a comeback

3. Aggressive wolves will be revealed to victims

4. Giving lambs a high likelihood of knowing their killer if they die

5. Arriving at the harbor more frequently for an exciting conclusion

6. More bodies means more clues for lambs, which means more reveals

7. Increasing the amount of action and moment to moment fun factor of KILLER INN.

It could feel bad to grind for gear for 7-8 minutes only to be quickly killed with zero chance for retribution. A large number of players had the experience where virtually nothing happens and then you die. Which does not make for a fun game. Because so few games ended up in the harbor, even if you survived and your team won, you may not have actually done anything, which also felt underwhelming. Resurrection now creates many more opportunities to actually use all the weapons, clues, and gear that you accumulated over the course of the match. And because you are likely to end up in the harbor, you are likely to participate in the match, win or lose.

The ability to roam as a ghost while waiting to respawn also gives you some much needed downtime, where you can inspect or conceal crime scenes, signal to other living players, talk amongst other ghosts, or try and spot some suspicious behavior while staying fairly invisible. This helps give a slight advantage to players who may have been the first to die.

Both Resurrection and Ghosts are major changes for KILLER INN. We expect that they will require many adjustments and fixes as players experience them in the live environment. This may be the biggest change to how KILLER INN feels to play in any update we have released so far. We hope you enjoy the changes they bring to KILLER INN.

Safe Zones

• Players now enter a combat state for 10 seconds after attacking or being attacked

  • Safe zones around staff no longer protect players who are in combat state

  • Players are still invulnerable while inspecting, inserting keys, and being grappled, even while in combat state

  • Being attacked while already invulnerable does not initiate combat state

• Killing a lamb in a safe zone now immediately reveals you as a wolf to all players

  • As a result, safe zone reveals can no longer be bribed away at the staff

• Players with beginner status are allowed to use safe zones even when in combat state

• Attacking a player who is in combat while you are invulnerable will immediately put you into combat state as well (thus, becoming vulnerable)

• Poison from traps, grenades, or poison spray do not trigger combat state

One of the default things players could do when getting into a fight was simply running to the staff to heal. Given how easy it is to reach a staff member, this made it very difficult to complete a kill, whether you’re chasing a revealed wolf or a lamb. You could even stay on the edge of a safe zone, jumping in and out to prolong your life, making for extremely long winded battles that were tedious. Rather than wolves being able to leverage the element of surprise, fights became an extended war of attrition.

This combat state allows players to largely use safe zones as before, but if you harm others or get harmed, you now need to wait 10 seconds before you can use one. Thankfully, if you retreat to a safe zone and are killed by a wolf, the wolf is revealed to everyone immediately. Since it may be your first life, you will resurrect and this wolf will be a target for every lamb, so it still may not be advantageous to kill near the safe zones as a wolf.

Guardians

• Guardians now become active at fixed time intervals throughout the match

  • One guardian becomes active at 4, 6, 8, and 10 minutes into the match

• Guardian difficulty and rewards increase for each new guardian activated

  • Guardians gain +300 health and +10% move speed for each new guardian

  • Rewards increase by 25 gold and XP for each new guardian

• Guardian base move speed increased by 50%

• Guardian base armor reduced from 60% -> 30%

• Guardian base health reduced from 2000 -> 900

• Guardian base XP rewards reduced from 225 / 175 / 125 -> 150 / 100 / 50 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd+ place

• Guardian base gold rewards reduced from 100 / 75 / 50 -> 75 / 50 / 25 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd+ place

The guardians were in a place where if you made a concerted effort to destroy them, they could be completed very quickly. Meanwhile, it was difficult to do so without a very specialized and generally quite advanced build. As a result, games with an exciting conclusion in the harbor were infrequent, and inconsistent.

Guardians being released at specific times with increasing health allows users to target them one by one, in lockstep with their gear quality, instead of all four being targeted simultaneously once players have geared up enough. Their staggered release also means the harbor cannot open too early. Finally, we have drastically lowered their durability and increased rewards to encourage players to engage with the guardians and open the harbor. The reduced armor also means more builds will be effective against guardians instead of armor piercing focused builds.

Tutorial

• A new tutorial explaining debuffs has been added to the tutorial list

• Added new loading tips for resurrection and ghosts

Custom Lobbies

• The host can now Kick (temporary) or Ban (permanent) players from their lobby

  • Previously, there was only one option which would effectively ban the player

  • If you create a new lobby, the ban status will clear on previously banned players

• Players who are actively speaking in a custom lobby are now highlighted in the player list

• Custom lobbies now have several new gameplay options relating to resurrection

• Custom lobbies now support up to 30 player matches

• Custom lobbies now support a custom long-form description field

• Spectate mode now defaults to All Players in custom lobby rules

Matchmaking

• Players who repeatedly leave casual matches before dying will now be temporarily banned

  • The inbox system will warn you if you have received an infraction, same as previously

  • This is to help curb players who quit if they don’t like their role (lamb or wolf).

Interface

Speech Bubbles

• Chat messages now display in speech bubbles over players' heads

• Preset messages have been added to the emote wheel

  • These will display as a normal text message in the chat window and above your head

• These messages are automatically translated into the local language of each receiving player

Clues

• Circumstantial clues (covered in blood, murder weapon) are now displayed overhead nearby players

• Fingerprint and blood clues now appear at the top of the workbench clue panel

• The wolf index list at the top left of the HUD has been removed

  • The utility of this list was virtually zero and with 30 players and an increased wolf ratio, it collided with other UI elements

Map

• Crime scene icons now group together based on zoom level on the map

• Revised map hover appearance to use a glow instead of a focus circle

• Revised map icon hover logic to allow more precise selection control

Misc

• Safe zones and actions that grant immunity (such as inspecting) now have special FX around the character

• Pinging a player now shows an accusation mark above their head

  • Additional pings from other players on the same target will increase the accusation level of the mark

• Role flourishes (i.e. "you are a wolf") can now be disabled or moved to the event feed in the options

• Main objective progress (guardians, harbor pulleys) is now displayed under the minimap

• Added dialog when awaiting purchases to complete from Steam

• Added warning when attempting to join a lobby while connecting to a match

• The casual play menu now shows informational dialogs about your current beginner state

• The suspect list can now be sorted by death cause

• Added support for more Korean characters in text chat

• Each battlepass now has its own Claim Rewards button, and a Claim All Rewards button is available to claim all tracks at once

• An option for "smurfing" has been added to the in-game report menu

Game Design Adjustments

• Dead bodies now drop 50% of their items as lootable items, and all dropped items are broken

  • This means a Repair Kit (or the Handyman) is now required to loot anything off of dead bodies

  • With the number of bodies that can now be produced, looting off of them freely was becoming too powerful, especially for wolves.

• Witnessing a player killing another player will now reveal the role of the attacker instantly

  • Both the attacker and victim must be visible on screen for this reveal to occur

  • Poison kills and kills by invisible players (such as Ninja) are never automatically revealed

  • We wanted to encourage stealth kills among wolves rather than murdering rampantly. It was also always possible to deduce who was on what team by paying close attention to the player count or examining the role of the corpse, but those techniques were only accessible to highly skilled players. By simply force revealing them, now beginners can also get the benefit of knowing what’s going on when they witness a kill.

• The conceal minigame now ensures at least one half rotation of the spinner before reaching a clue

  • Sometimes the spinner could appear immediately in front of a clue, making it either awkward to time correctly, or inconsistent quick to solve

• The level of other players is no longer visible until match start immunity ends

  • It was possible to reveal a wolf by simply examining their level if they had completed concealing a sacrifice very early on in the game, and at times you had no control over this if someone else concealed your sacrifice for you. So now, your level is concealed for the first two minutes of the game, making this kind of reveal impossible.

• The number of visible clue trait colors now changes based on the number of players in the match

  • For example, matches with fewer players might only allow red, blue, and green clothing colors, instead of all 5 normal options

  • This means that visible clues (hair, clothing) will be less revealing with lower player counts, due to matching more players

• Projectiles thrown through windows now break the glass and continue moving

• Your sacrifice is now automatically tracked on match start when playing as wolf

• The lamb / wolf role information flourish now plays on connect instead of on match start

Network

• Player movement now extrapolates over the network to improve cases of watching other players with packet loss or poor connections

Level

• Many open world item pickups have been replaced by single-use chests that have no token cost

  • This allowed us to conceal what item was being spawned in many cases, making it more difficult to hack to discover item locations.

• The top floor of the harbor lighthouse is no longer locked and has reduced item pickups

• Guaranteed ammo and health pack drops behind locked doors in the harbor have been replaced by standard item pickups

• Removed guaranteed gold pickup from the Solarium Wing casino room

• Mystery chests can no longer drop Crowbars

• Mystery chests can now correctly drop Cat Charms

• Gold can no longer spawn in open pickups and is only available from drawers, mini-chests, and crates

  • This makes it more consistent to locate valuable gold pickups, especially for a character such as Con-man who relies on these pickups.

• Traps now spawn slightly more frequently as pickups in the world

• Utility items now spawn less frequently as pickups in the world

  • This includes the stunner, forensics kit, super cleaner, and repair kit

Optimization

• Revised blood impact FX to improve visuals and optimize performance

• Optimized player animation performance

• Optimized particle system performance

• Optimized minimap zoom performance

• Optimized runtime memory usage to improve game performance

Wolf Ratio

• Ratio of Wolves to Lambs changed from 33% to 40%

Constant buffing of the lamb team caused the wolves to win at a very distant 25-30% from the lambs, which caused a huge number of games to be uneventful. With the addition of resurrection, the game feels fairly different, and we will keep a close eye on the win rate to try and keep it as close to 50% as possible, leading to the majority of the games feeling fun.

The other issue being addressed, with a 2:1 ratio of lambs to wolves, so many of the games were played as lamb, and so many lambs had to die in order to get anywhere near a 50% win rate for the wolf team. This meant that a huge percentage of playtime was spent dying, leading to unpleasant play experience a significant amount of the time. With a more gradual 3:2 ratio, players will get to play as wolf more frequently, and the number of deaths necessary to balance out the game is considerably less.

Guns

Revolver

• Revolver base damage increased from 50 -> 55

• Revolver base headshot damage increased from 100 -> 120

• Revolver base bullet spread reduced from 1.25° -> 0.5°

• Revolver base aimed bullet spread reduced from 0.25° -> 0° (fully accurate while aiming)

• Revolver base recoil increased by 75%

• Revolver Slowing Shot slow amount increased from 30% -> 40%

The once powerful revolver has the lowest win rate and lowest pick rate of all the guns by a substantial margin in the previous patch. The slowing shot upgrade was one of the least selected upgrades in the game by a wide margin, so we have given it a small boost.

In particular, we wanted you to be able to more accurately hit players with the revolver. It could feel bad to have someone pegged under the crosshair but still miss due to the firing spread. While that is still possible while hip firing, it is now much less likely, and impossible while aiming.

SMG

• SMG Stabilizer accuracy reduced from +75% -> +50%

• SMG Stabilizer recoil reduction reduced from -75% -> -50%

• SMG Burst Shot now grants +25% accuracy

• SMG Burst Shot fire rate increased from 1/s -> 1.33/s

• SMG Burst Shot bullet spread bloom reduced from 1° -> 0.25°

• SMG Silencer and Stabilizer have flipped positions in the upgrade list to match other guns

The Burst Shot still felt underwhelming in terms of power compared to the other upgrade paths. It was also virtually impossible to headshot with due to the bullet spread. Its overall damage output was considerably lower than other builds due to needing to pick stabilizer generally and the slower rate of fire. So we have given it a rate of fire increase, and improved accuracy, making headshots more viable on this weapon.

Poison

• Poison resistance is now calculated as a linear duration increase up to 2x duration at 100% resistance

  • For example, 50% poison resistance means poison will take 1.5x longer to kill you (total 90s for basic poison). 25% resistance takes 1.25x longer, and 75% resistance takes 1.75x longer

• Poison movement transitions and slow have been shortened to be less oppressive

Characters

(NEW) Journalist

• Level 2 Passive - Secret Knowledge

  • Using a token dispenser grants you 1 token, 15 gold, and 25 XP. 90 second cooldown

• Level 4 Passive - Magic Map

  • All players and objects are visible on the map at all times

(NEW) Psychometrist

• Level 2 Passive - Psychometry

  • Inspecting a corpse tracks the killer. +25% damage against players tracked this way

• Level 4 Passive - Life Sense

  • +15% physical damage reduction per nearby player (max 30%)

Runner

• Sprinter now has custom visual and sound FX while active

Cowgirl

• Deadeye damage bonus reduced from +15% (max 60%) -> +10% (max 40%)

• We made some buffs to the revolver, and thus reduced the damage on the cowgirl to compensate

Hunter

• (revised) Level 4 Passive - Tracker

  • BEFORE: +25% damage against tracked players, inspecting a corpse tracks the killer, players can be tracked from the suspects menu

  • AFTER: +25% damage against tracked players, players can be tracked from the suspects menu

  • Hunter's tracking ability has been simplified to not overlap with the Psychometrist's ability theme

Pirate

• (revised) Level 4 Passive - Sea Legs

  • BEFORE: +20% damage and +20% physical damage reduction while in the harbor

  • AFTER: +20% damage while in the harbor

  • Reaching the Harbor is far more likely now with changes to guardians and resurrection, thus Pirate needed some adjustment to counterbalance his extreme power in this final phase of the game.

Singer

• (revised) Level 4 Passive - Echolocation

  • BEFORE: Players are visible through walls when making noise, and can see gunfire afterimages

  • AFTER: Activate to tag everyone in a radius, making them visible through walls for a time. +25% damage against tagged players

Miscellaneous

• Lamb partial clues can no longer drop fingerprint or blood clues

• Gold earned from a kill changed from [20 Gold at Level 1, +30 per additional target level] to [50 Gold at Level 1, +10 per additional target level].

  • Assists grant 25 Gold at Level 1, +5 per additional target level.

• XP earned from a kill changed from [25 XP at Level 1, +50 per additional target level] to [100 XP at Level 1, +20 per additional target level].

  • Assists grant 50 XP at Level 1, +10 per additional target level.

  • With the added volume of kills due to resurrection, the gold and XP kill rewards had to be lowered considerably to maintain proper balance. Players will still be worth more to kill the higher their level, but it will be considerably weaker than in the past on average.

• Base damage bonus against revealed wolves reduced from +20% -> +10%

• Damage bonus against revealed wolves now increases by 5% per clue found, up to 40%

  • While it is now much easier to reveal a wolf in general (due to instant reveals, combat timer reveals, additional clues, resurrection), the 20% instant damage bonus felt too strong. However, we still wanted to encourage clue finding, concealing, and discourage rampaging wolves. Thus you can now get a considerably larger (40%) overall damage bonus against wolves who are playing carelessly with their clues.

• Damage scaling on grapple changed to be 2 hits for knife and 3 hits for punch at equal character level

Interface

• Fixed the ammo item pickup having a purple background instead of the intended red

• Fixed stuck case after trying to join a full lobby with lobby code

• Fixed custom lobby tabs not being navigable properly when using a controller

• Fix lobby join button not being disabled when searching and connecting to a server in an existing lobby

• Fixed spectators not seeing the correct equipment on other players

• Fixed players being able to join custom lobbies above the host's set Max Players

• Fixed max level stat not showing correctly on the career menu

• Fixed the end game progression screen not showing the most up to date progress amount

• Fixed player numbers sometimes being inconsistent on different menus

• Fixed slight text overlap in the safe zone interface

• Fixed text spacing issues on the tutorial prompt boxes

• Fixed damage bonus against revealed wolves not displaying on the large clue banners

• Fixed text overlap in the spectator player count display

• Fixed fingerprint and blood clue analysis not removing the notification icon at the workbench

• Fixed notification bubbles sometimes appearing when no rewards were available on the seasonal battlepass

• Fixed the match completed notification having some misaligned elements

• Fixed the health bar animation snapping incorrectly when healing and taking damage at the same time

• Fixed player title text being slightly cut off in the custom lobby menu

Gameplay

• Fixed trap detonators not being removed from inventory when the trap is disarmed

• Fixed tap-to-sprint options causing certain actions to be instantly cancelled if sprint was active

• Fixed damage buffs from one weapon (i.e. upgraded Toxic Dart with bonus toxic damage) applying to damage over time from other weapons (i.e. upgraded Revolver with toxic)

• Fixed a case where players could erroneously bad guess after receiving another player's weapon (via trading or looting) that had previously inflicted damage over time or poison to a player on your team

• Fixed damage over time kills not being counted as a kill if the weapon that applied the debuff was sold before killing the other player

• Fixed existing damage over time on a player receiving the damage buffs from a later damage over time attack on the same player

• Fixed the final use of toxic upgraded poison spray not applying the toxic damage

• Fixed Ninja's Stealth damage bonus applying inconsistently when using thrown weapons

• Fixed traps to use the player's trap buffs at the time the trap was placed rather than when it was detonated

• Fixed training mode bots dropping partial clues

• Fixed issue where SMGs upgraded with Burst Shot could have shots rejected by the game server

• Fixed player rims staying stuck active after holding the Ctrl key to open the alternative Dpad menu

• Fixed lamb partial clues not pooling correctly

• Fixed the crowbar not being able to be pickpocketed

• Fixed a case where the guardian would not take initial damage during the basic tutorial if the player was standing in a safe zone when the objective started

• Fixed Gangster's Decked Out passive causing the SMG to upgrade for free when traded to another player

• Fixed Gangster's Decked Out passive not applying the clip size bonus when swapped in a chest

• Fixed weapon upgrades sometimes not applying when firing immediately after equipping

Network

• Fixed melee lunge attacks from other players causing their position to warp ahead suddenly

Animation

• Fixed some emotes not being interruptable for female characters

• Fixed grapple animations not playing if the victim was grappled after placing a trap

Level

• Fixed some cases where guardians could get stuck in the environment and unable to move

• Fixed a misaligned balustrade in the harbor

• Fixed Z-fighting in the Solarium Wing banquet hall floor

• Fixed a ladder misaligning in Solarium Wing due to nearby geometry

• Fixed an embedded purple trail quest in Lunum Wing

• Fixed an embedded chest in the harbor

Audio

• Fixed main menu music sometimes playing twice

• Fixed bug where the main menu music would sometimes not play when launching the game or returning from a match

Localization

• Fixed text overflow in the workbench suspects panel in some languages

• Fixed text overflow in the shop buy panel in certain languages

• Fixed text overflow in some languages on the elimination screen

• Fixed text overflow in some languages in the region selector