This is a Safe Place

Agents,

While the overall mission of S2P is to contain and eliminate the supernatural threats that are hazardous to mankind, it’s getting to the Safe Area that I’m sure felt like the most important mission in the last closed beta.

That was for a good reason. After all, that’s where you got to relax a bit after making minced meat out of the QT with your AR or flambe’d them to high heavens with a flamethrower. And of course, the fact that Safe Area was the only place you can bank your perm progression had little something to do with it.

As discussed in the previous blog, you will have access to the armory and the growth room to engage with your unlocked guns and stats before you even start a new game. This is an improvement we’re making based on the closed beta feedback, as many of you found that only being able to do that in the Safe Area was not the best experience.

So no need to look forward to SA, you say? Au contraire. Let me tell you about the changes we’re making so you can continue to feel the relief only the SA can bring you after a grueling battle.

Entering the Safe Area

It used to be that you were only able to enter the SA after meeting the mission conditions and killing all QTs. But that last bit will be no more–we are making it so that you can rush the SA after clearing the mission and shut the door to keep out the flailing QTs. Once in the SA, we’re thinking of generating a popup that briefs you of your performance in the level you just cleared. It may potentially show you things like the Data Nugs collected, tell you how far in Section 13 you went, etc. So sort of like the results screen you see when you die, but you see it when you’re alive. A performance review, courtesy of the overlords at S2P.

This is the working version of the revamped results screen, by the way

Using the Machines

Many of you actually did not use the machines that were placed in the Safe Area during the last closed beta, or at least, not right away. We suspect the cause of this to be that the machines didn’t immediately look like objects you can interact with. So we are changing the presentation of the machines to make them way more noticeable and draw you to them. Part of the sense of relief SA should offer is knowing that when you leave it, you’re walking out as a better agent. You should be healed, have achieved better growth stats, and carry the new gun you potentially just unlocked with a Blueprint.

Remember the DNS Defragmenter? That’s the big machine where you can spend your Data Nugs for permanent growth. Similar to how we envision the Nethersphere in the S2P Archives, a giant Nethersphere will take center stage in the new DNS Defragmenter design and the SA overall. And it will be revealed from its tube encasement when its shield slides down and literally let down its guard upon your entrance.

No, that’s not Zordon. That’s the mockup of Nethersphere inside the DNS Defragmenter

There were other machines in the Safe Area, if you recall, like the Weapons Blueprint computer and the Medical Bay. Each of these finely tuned S2P equipment will get visual upgrades to ensure you cannot help but click on them out of curiosity.

While some agents bypassed the machines, there was also another phenomenon at the other end of the spectrum where you thought you were using the machines but nothing was happening, leading you to wonder if they were steel bricks with flickering lights.
This was actually a simple problem of you being able to interact with the machine when you didn’t need to. For instance, the Medical Bay removes all the debuffs you’ve been inflicted with. But if you’re clean, you of course don’t see the cleansing power of the MB. But you had been trained to expect an effect after pressing and holding that E key up until that moment. So what we’re doing now is to only trigger that E key if you meet the condition to interact with the machine such as when you have a Blueprint to use and you need to remove Panic or the like. Hopefully, this will take away the confusion and you can focus on actions you need to take in the SA.

Well, here we are–at the end of another blog and nearing the day when we can talk more about Closed Beta 2! Keep an eye out by joining our Discord or following our channels and see you soon.

ODS ThorThor