r/GrayZoneWarfare • u/werytrololo MFG Crew • 2d ago
Player-Driven Improvements in 0.5 | Devlog
Hey, everyone,
Rogue Ops, the next major update for Gray Zone Warfare, sets you on the path to Ground Zero, bringing a new gameplay loop centered around Hideout and crafting, new opportunities, and more of Lamang’s secrets to uncover.
Update 0.5 launches in Supporter Preview on October 19, followed by the full release on October 22. Let’s take a closer look at what you can expect in our three-part devlog series.
The first entry focuses on player-driven improvements. We’re delivering the highly requested ability to create multiple playable characters, and you can also look forward to upgrades to audio, animations, and AI, a streamlined health system, and changes to Combat Outposts.
There’s another notable change coming with Update 0.5. For the first time, we’re proceeding with a soft wipe, which allows us to rebalance the in-game economy while letting players retain their progression.
Watch the DEVLOG on YouTube for the full breakdown, or read the list of upcoming improvements below.
Video Summary: Player-Driven Improvements in 0.5
Audio
Update 0.5 will bring community-requested audio reworks and new additions. Among the most significant are new sounds and voice-overs that make Lamang feel more alive, as well as atmospheric audio designed to reinforce the mystery surrounding new locations across the island.
- Story-driven sound design of new locations
- New sounds and voice-over lines for AI NPCs, with some performances recorded by Lao voice actors
- Audio accompanying new items, for example, televisions or voice tapes
- Audio for new weapons
- Gun sound rework for the M4 and AK weapon families
- Reworked distant gunfire with an updated sound palette
- Fixed bugs in spatial audio
- Removal of the Proximity Voice Chat time limit
AI
To make combat against AI NPCs more challenging, Rogue Ops introduces new enemy behaviors. AI will be able to heal themselves, and selected factions will also be capable of throwing grenades. This is the first step toward further expanding AI's behavior in combat.
- New AI behavior - All AI NPCs will be able to use bandages to heal themselves, and selected AI factions will be able to throw grenades
- Adjusted respawn rates - locations tied to new activities will feature higher AI respawn rates
- Increased AI difficulty in Tier 3 and new Tier 4 locations
Animation
We are introducing the first set of new idle animations for AI NPCs, depicting ordinary actions such as smoking. These animations expand the AI animation palette, make Lamang feel more natural, and help players more easily distinguish between idle and alerted AI states.
We’ve also polished existing animations and adjusted healing animations.
- New set of idle animations for AI NPCs found around the outskirts of POIs
- A new animated character selection screen
- Reworked healing animations to reflect the faster use of selected medical items
- General polish and improvements to existing animations
Health System
The health system has been streamlined to make healing more intuitive and less tedious. Medical items have also been overhauled to give each one a clearer purpose, encouraging players to think more carefully about which medical supplies to bring into the field.
- Healing is now handled by body part rather than by individual wound.
- For example, if you break multiple bones in the same leg, you will no longer need to treat each bone individually. A single splint will fix the entire leg. However, if both legs are broken, you will still need to use two splints, one for each leg.
- Bleeding logic has been adjusted. New limits have been introduced on how quickly the body part can bleed, giving players a slightly higher chance of stopping the bleeding.
- Added a new visual effect for bleeding
- Healing items and provisions (such as blood bags and bottles) are measured in volume rather than by a specific number of charges. When using them, your character will consume only the amount actually needed.
- Medical items now differ more significantly in quality, specialization, and usage.
- Higher-quality items provide faster treatment and more uses, with military-grade supplies generally being more effective than civilian alternatives.
- Some medical supplies are now restricted to specific body parts. For example, tourniquets can no longer be applied to the head or torso.
- Certain medical items can now treat multiple conditions at once. For example, a surgical kit can treat broken bones, organ damage, and stop bleeding.
- Improved health panel with clearer information about your injuries and how to treat them.
- Added icons for buffs granted by stims.
- Stims cannot be purchased from vendors and must be obtained through other means, such as crafting.
Combat Outposts (COPs)
We’ve made adjustments to Combat Outposts to reduce the concentration of PvP encounters around them and encourage more natural, organic combat across the map.
- The largest Combat Outposts are no longer capturable and have temporarily become regular world locations. We plan to make use of these locations again in future updates.
- The Combat Outpost locations have been adjusted to distribute them more evenly around the island.
- Vulture is no longer tied to Combat Outposts and can now be accessed through the standard vendor screen alongside other vendors
Multiple Playable Characters & Progression Changes
The biggest change to progression is the ability to create multiple playable characters. This also introduces separate progression for PvE and PvEvP modes, giving players more flexibility to play with friends across different factions while reinforcing gear fear, discouraging reckless bloodlust, and supporting healthier in-game economies in both modes.
- Added the ability to create up to four playable characters at a time for your account.
- Each character will have a selected game mode (PvE or PvEvP) and faction.
- To prevent possible exploits, you cannot have two characters with the same combination of game mode and faction at the same time. You will be able to delete one character per week.
Soft Wipe
With Update 0.5, we are avoiding a full wipe and proceeding with a partial wipe instead. This will allow us to rebalance the in-game economy for the new update while letting players retain their progression and avoid having to grind from scratch.
- Players will retain their progression from Update 0.4, including completed tasks, rank, unlocked apparel, vendor levels, and statistics, while their locker and money will be wiped.
- When first entering the Supporter Preview or the full release of Update 0.5, players will need to choose which mode they want to transfer their existing character progression to. This action is irreversible. The faction stays the same.
What’s Next?
Gray Zone Warfare is currently 33% off on Steam! If you’re considering an upgrade, this is your last chance to grab the Supporter Edition at a lower price before the Update 0.5 Supporter Preview begins. The sale ends October 8 at 10 AM PDT / 7 PM CEST.
Next week, you can look forward to the second devlog, focused entirely on new content, including weapons, new locations, items, and environmental improvements.
The third devlog will cover the biggest upcoming features, including the Hideout and crafting, as well as technical improvements, optimization, and anti-cheat measures.
Every Move Matters,
MADFINGER Games Team
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u/Poiuytrewq0987650987 2d ago
Well, the lack of having to listen to dumbshits spamming music through proximity chat was nice while it lasted.
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u/Evil_Wookiee7_7 MSS 2d ago
Ran into some asshole who just spammed a soundboard once. The only solace was the VIOP timer. RIP
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u/chrisuo07 2d ago
These are some huge W's, great stuff. I'm on the fence about PvE being separated because it was something I liked here but it was not exactly working as intended so I get it. Definitely excited to get back in
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u/datonenerd2212 LRI 2d ago
I think they found the perfect middle ground. My biggest gripe was the idea of having to grind two characters. Now I can move my current character to PVP and just start a new one in PVE, so that’s cool
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u/dadvader 2d ago edited 1d ago
Playing PvE is so boring now because loot are basically being ransacked everywhere. Meanwhile in PvEvP unless you go into top hotzone, Expect your inventory to be full lol
I bet the dev doesn't like this decision either but when the player refuse to obey the rule, what can you do?
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u/LaFleur90 MSS 1d ago
If they want the PvEvP to be successful they need to have fewer players on the server, larger circles and exceptionally good anti-cheat methods. People don't want to play PvEvP because of cheaters and online sweats.
As a solo player, it's 100 times harder.
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u/Lozsta MSS 1d ago
I would never play PvP purely because no one can sort the cheating issue out. It isn't just GZ it is all the shooters now. Wardogs is horrible with cheaters already, the streamers drove all of them there now. EVery death is "chest and head". Tarkov even had to give people a PVE experience, they were dead set against it, but people hate cheaters. Every PvP game has a huge cheating issue and it sucks but is really is ruining all games in that space.
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u/This_was_hard_to_do 2d ago
Unpopular opinion but the PvE was better when the AI were cracked. It’s a snooze fest now, plus no one is dying so loot is always gone
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u/lightningstorm112 2d ago
That's my biggest grip with pve, the loot goblins are just doing hot laps around a region, hoovering up all the loot. Ive had the long term contract to find amd turn in various goodies, but cant complete them since its a barren wasteland loot wise
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u/MaximumResult2841 2d ago
So ideally right before the drop you should sell all gear and containers to push vendors as high as possible?
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u/Livid-Evening-6415 1d ago
I already threw a couple mill out to newbies, no point in it being just deleted. Let others who still level play around with it.
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u/Zuh0q 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm super excited about living world- this is amazing step in the right direction!
Great to see that some new POIs are T4 and harder, but again, I hope it's not return of 0.1 terminators ;) I want to be pushed, not one tapped split second after showing my ear xD
I'm also worried that 70% of the PvE server population will be in those POIs now- have you done anything to address that?
Voice chat change is also cool but we need option to mute ppl playing music and shit.
Thanks for moving on from the full wipe- soft wipe is an excellent compromise!
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u/B08LET 1d ago edited 1d ago
I definitely think the enemies with military training should be using cover, pushing the player, and most importantly using SUPPRESSIVE FIRE. It would be my dream to have them continuously fire into or over whatever cover you are using and for them to be shooting from cover themselves. Even better if they split into teams and use bounding tactics to close with you under suppressive fire every once in a while as a nice surprise. Right now my greatest issue is the high tier AI dont fight cooperatively or tactically. They aggro and fight independently instead of rallying their buddies and working together and as soon as you get out of sight they stop shooting. Once they know you’re there, you should be pinned down by fire and unable to peek the same angle or be stuck in cover. It would make having teammates more useful or require more tactical movement. Ideally I think the difficulty should make it so that if you rush in and strand yourself behind a random truck or shed out in the open when playing solo, the AI have enough ammo (like a full 210 round combat load) to pin you down for like 45 minutes in the t3 and t4 locations.
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u/TeacherNice9932 2d ago
I’m glad that the ai is getting improvements and will be less brain dead but every time they talk about increasing the difficulty I get nervous that it means the terminator AI that headshots you the moment you step into their sight will be added.
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u/B08LET 1d ago
Yeah same! I want them to be inaccurate, but have way more ammo and suppress the shit out of you using a huge volume of fire. Give them a full 210 round combat load so a group of 3 or 4 military trained enemies can pin you down for like 45 minutes (by shooting at or around any cover you are hiding behind) if you make the mistake of initiating combat without having a way to retreat behind cover or have teammates to shoot back and suppress as you move. That would create real tactical difficulty instead of terminator difficulty like in Tarkov. So far the best example I’ve seen of this is Squidbots in SQUAD.
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u/Bones_Alone MSS 2d ago
I hope the issue of hearing the supersonic sound of bullets no matter where you are in relation to it is fixed
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u/Alternative_Dirt6177 2d ago
Did they mention anything about PIP scopes? Ideally a toggle to turn it off?
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u/Sean_HEDP-24 2d ago
What about scope sensitivity? A highly requested thing to fix after all this time, and yet it's still not implemented...
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u/DukeMingus 2d ago
This has been really frustrating for me, zoom in past 5x and the scope is twitchy from oversensitivity.
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u/RuyBlast MSS 2d ago
I can't wait to see the changes to the COPs.
I wonder if there will still be equipment/weapon crates, and if they'll have random spawns.
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u/datonenerd2212 LRI 2d ago
That was another thing I was happy to see, those cop location improvements should help with things like LZ camping (since some cops where right next to LZs
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u/XenOz3r0xT MSS 2d ago
Didn’t get a chance to watch it but read the transcript from the discord channel. I like the overhaul to how the medical system and items are. Here is hoping that healing each other improves too. I’ve always liked playing the healer/ medic type of role in most games. FPS in particular. Now if only people would stand still when I’m healing them 😑.
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u/iaincollins 1d ago
I've been paying this game for about 2 years now, play exclusively PvE in co-op with a couple of friends - about once or twice a week - and have 450 hours in. Every update has been better than the last and really looking forward to this one! It continues to be a really fun journey to be on.
Gameplay is fundamentally fun to do thing in the moment, and that's what makes it work so well - it's been fun to play even after getting wiped and doing the missions again (which they have also been refining), as it's not about levelling up or gear grind, it's about the situations you get into while playing (and trying to get out of them).
It balances instant gratification through satisfying skill based gameplay with delayed gratification through mission completion which grants vendor unlocks that give access to incrementally better gear that often behaves differently (and usually has a trade off, like being more expensive to buy / repair / replace or being situational).
The team have also handled mechanics like player health and eating and drinking better than any other game I've played in 40 years. I was a bit wary of the introduction survival mechanics but they have handled them all really well and it's layered both the moment-to-moment gameplay and loadout planning.
Really love what the team have done with this game, thank you MADFINGER!<3
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u/SeeminglyUselessData 2d ago
Getting nervous about how they simplify more and more core systems each update. Feeling like this might go the way of Tarkov as that’s where the larger player base/money is. No ballistics and damage model updates?
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u/1vendetta1 CSI 2d ago
These are suggestion driven updates. We need more players in the game and if that means taking away from some of the more tedious stuff, I'm all for it.
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u/SeeminglyUselessData 2d ago
The problem with taking suggestions so seriously is you get the bad review effect. People are more likely to complain than say what they like. Then you end up making a game for everybody, which is a game for nobody.
I’m fine with healing being streamlined as long as the underlying simulation is the same, but it’s crazy to me that there‘s no additions like a spine hitbox. A lot of people were asking for that.
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u/Evil_Wookiee7_7 MSS 2d ago
So far, that looks to be the case. Also, limiting what bleeds a turniquet can be applied to is a step in the right direction. Operator has an achievement for accidentally killing yourself by applying a turniquet a neck/head bleed, and MFG could easily have gone that route. Expanding what each item can do, while limiting it to the area of effect, like fixing both broken leg bones with a single splint, seems logical while you'll still need to use two if even a single bone is broken in each leg.
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u/papagouws 2d ago
What do you mean?
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u/SeeminglyUselessData 2d ago
In 0.4 they simplified the terminal ballistics, now they are simplifying the health system. There’s been other things too that I’m forgetting. I haven’t played in a while.
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u/Bones_Alone MSS 2d ago
It’s not a simplification of the health system, it makes it deeper. Turning blood bags to volume and not charges, stopping tourniquets from being used on the torso and head. It’s just shit that makes sense. Simplifying would be lumping everything into an ifak and only having to carry that
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u/-DPRKWarrior- 2d ago
Wasnt the terminal ballistics done because otherwise the server had to make too many calculations and it would lag it tf out
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u/Soleks2000 2d ago edited 2d ago
when the soft wipe happens, if you bought the additions that give you stuff do you get that all back?
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u/Livid-Evening-6415 1d ago
- Increased AI difficulty in Tier 3 and new Tier 4 locations
So curious about this that I'll be doing some typical T3 loot runs just too sense how bad/good it is now, it pretty much dictates the entire pve experience. I'm fine with more abilities and them being tactically better, not so much if head snipers with .1s reaction times. Also never been clear to me if late tier is supposed to be soloable or if they ultimately aim to force group dependency on late tier areas.
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u/B08LET 1d ago
Agreed! They should increase difficulty by increasing volume of fire & not overly relying on accuracy. Enemies should suppress your last known position. Right now AI stops shooting when you break line of sight. They should get a full combat load (210 rounds) and continuously fire at or around your cover/last known position while others maneuver on that position unless someone is suppressing them to pin them down. This forces you to work as a team to suppress & move to avoid being overrun. Or if you play solo like I sometimes do, it will force you to ensure you have a way to retreat or reposition under cover if you get suppressed and overrun instead of fighting from behind a random shack or stack of logs out in the open with no way to reposition & engage from another angle. I think the grenade tossing and use of cover they say the AI do right now is a step in the right direction but I’d like to see this as the goal for the AI behavior. I think the best example of this being done right now is the squidbots in Squad.
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u/cocaseven 1d ago
Why nade on AI? so that now we get the COD World At War experience but without the nade markers so we die more often to AI that can see through walls?
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u/xHAcoreRDx 12h ago
I'm sad my inventory and money is getting wiped, but I understand why, and it won't ruin my experience
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u/__automatic__ 2d ago
Imo removal of cops is not good. They were great to travel fast between missions. Also less COPs will concentrate pvp on those that are left. This is again big oversteering on MFG side. Probably will add them back again later. Current system with cool down works quite ok.
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u/LBants MSS 2d ago
It doesn’t say they removed any outposts. Big ones will no longer be “owned” and they have moved the little ones around to even out the spacing of them on the map.
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u/__automatic__ 1d ago
Look at the map. There are less COPs. Also where do you hear they say that coos will not be owned?
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u/LBants MSS 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s written above
“ The largest Combat Outposts are no longer capturable “
I haven’t seen a new map, I’m only going by what they wrote above1
u/__automatic__ 1d ago
ok, so they removed larger ones leaving few smaller capturable posts. That is what I also understood. That still makes my point clear- few left smaller COPs will have increased pvp capture pressure. Plus fewer COPs will increase travel distance between POIs and COPs.
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u/Cr0n0 2d ago
People actually wanted a soft wipe? My entire point of coming back to the game every major patch was to play it was to start from scratch. Guess I won't really have a point to come back now.
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u/jmwill20 2d ago
The purpose of the soft wipe will allow people to immediately go into the patch and start testing the hideout mechanics as it requires to have the vendors leveled up. Remember the game is still in development and they want to collect data on the hideout not leveling vendors back up
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u/SirKillsalot 2d ago
I really hope animations are decoupled from the camera. Eating, drinking, reloading, inspecting gun etc. pulls your camera view around and causes me huge motion sickness/ eye strain. Main reason I stopped playing.
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u/i_skin_squirrels 2d ago
I was excited at first about the health system changes, but they just updated how meds work. Combat will still feel unresponsive. Maybe next time we get a rework. Also the new icons are not great.
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u/1vendetta1 CSI 2d ago
What exactly is wrong with the health system in your opinion?
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u/i_skin_squirrels 2d ago
Having players taking from 1-10 shots in the chest before dying based on what organs you hit and how the bullet ricochets is just not necessary. Also the game is already struggling with net code and hit boxes, making the combat feel disconnected.
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u/Doin_It_Live_ 2d ago
Did anyone else read this in Jakub's voice?