It’s finally here!

The (UK SERVER) 2024 August patch notes!

We’ve been slow putting patch notes out for the last few months but many of you have already noticed quite of a few of the changes based on feedback on social media and news outlets. So here we go the patch notes!

NPCs

NPC Behaviour has been changed in many ways since the last patch notes. We’ve been slowly adding to it over the last few months to see how people would react without the patch notes and its been interesting to say the least.

• NPCs have had their traits updated;

  • Racism trait increased by 27%
  • Xenophobia trait increase by 45%
    • Both of these now have a higher chance to trigger the Riot event

• NPC Driving behaviour has been tweaked;

  • NPC’s are now more likely to change lanes without indication to make driving more challenging
  • As above we also tweaked changing_lanes_without_looking values so that this happens more frequently to increase the challenge further
  • NPCs will have a greater chance of driving below speed limit on national limit roads. Preference will be 40-50mph in these zones rather than the 70mph limit
  • Qashqai, Juke, and Kuga vehicles are now exclusive to NPCs and cannot be owned by players. If a player does have one of these legacy items they will receive the npc_energy debuff
  • Mokka (Model B) and Kia EVs added to the NPC available vehicles
  • NPC Pick of Tesla (Models 3 and Y) has been increased 15%
  • NPCs will now mostly pick vehicles of class SUV

Economy

We had quite a lot of vocal feedback from the players with higher resource levels regarding item ownership in game. Those with higher resources were unhappy that those with less resources could easily obtain player owned housing and other assets and that these should be a reward for higher resources rather than being easily obtainable and should be an end game item.

• Housing tweaked;

  • Player owned housing is now hard to own for anyone taking on job types of average_salary and low_salary type. Housing is no longer considered to be an item that is a general benefit of choosing a job class or a basic requirement of playing
  • House pricing increased again to ensure that the own home buff remains out of reach for many players which keeps the higher level players happy
  • Rent values increased significantly. This helps to also keep player owned housing lower due to higher expenditures for most players. Teaming up with another player to gain the Dual income buff is required generally in order to keep up with these increases.
  • mortgage_deposit_required_percentage lowered in some instances, however the mortgage status effect is still mostly unobtainable unless you have the inheritance or parental_help buffs or choose to take the miserable and doing_nothing debuffs
    • Note for higher level players; ability to obtain mortgage status effect is not affected by players purchasing items Avacado Toast,Takeaway Coffee or Netflix generally due to the massive increses we’ve seen in housing prices in the game over the last 40 years. These increases have out-stripped any currency benefit gained by not purchasing these items. We’d appreciate it if you stopped bullying lower level players with this logic as we have checked the numbers, and it doesnt make sense
  • Players / NPCs with the job role Landlord have a had the random_evicion values tweaked slightly. Players with Landlord role have given feedback was that it was too hard to make money while doing nothing for anyone renting, even though we allowed rent values to increase dramatically and have lowered the standards of housing allowed so that there is lower upkeep on each property each tick

• Item costs;

  • General costs increased on all basic items. Feedback from players with higher resources was they were not making enough from thier investments in supermarkets. Items of type food and also those tagged necessity have been increased to compensate. The side effect of this is that players may notice that their job quest earnings don’t go quite as far as they once did
  • Upkeep items that are a requirement for house rental or owner players Electricity and Gas remain high as investments players are seeing an up-tick in profits on the whole

Random events

Random events have been tweaked as you have all already noticed;

• New event! - US stock market fluctuation event has begun! This will make in game stock markets in a bit less predictable. It’s been a while since the Financial crisis event (We last ran it in 2008!). This has been added as a random event that can be triggered by the current event!
• Riot chance has been increased by 15% and can be triggered more frequently due to the NPC behaviour changes acting as a multiplier
• Destabilisation event has started in middle-eastern regions