Please note that all plans are subject to change and the information on this page is provided as a view into our development process, not as a list of promises.
In the past, when we added new weapons, we increased the armory access level limit. This had the unfortunate effect of increasing the grind required to promote, as well as making it harder to access each new weapon.
Additionally, some players enjoy progression in games beyond leveling up or competing on a leaderboard, so crafting will be a method of obtaining stat-tracking items, which debuted with the Air Time medal currently available from an easter egg in the Operation Sandstorm mission of the Reduction campaign.
The Contract Campaigns that will eventually be playable to earn access to the next group of weapons added to the game will use a lot of the same systems that crafting materials use, and testing crafting materials first gives us a much simpler (and more importantly, repeatable) way of making sure the system is ready for general use.
Each week that you play Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop, crafting materials will appear in missions. If you do not collect them all after they appear, they will remain collectable indefinitely, and the next week's materials will add to what you already have available. Additionally, if you play a lot, crafting materials may appear independently of the weekly refresh.
If you find crafting materials in a mission, you can simply pick them up and they will be added to your inventory, even if you fail to complete the mission. If multiple players have crafting materials in a mission, they will appear in the same locations, but will not necessarily be the same materials. If you fail to find a crafting material in a mission, your eligibility is not consumed and the material will appear again in a future mission you play.
Crafting material spawn locations are decided automatically, so if any materials spawn in an unreachable or just incorrect-looking place, be sure to take a screenshot and report the bug.
Missions where crafting materials are currently available are marked in the mission chooser. Crafting materials can appear in any mission type, including custom challenges and deathmatch.
There is a setting to prevent crafting materials from appearing in missions if you find them distracting. Each week you play will still count toward the amount of materials you can find once you change the setting back.
There are five categories of raw crafting materials that will be available during the beta:
Every week, after at least 30 minutes of playtime (playtime being defined as having the game open), you will become eligible for:
Up to 5 materials spawn in each mission, so assuming you collect every material you can, the weekly materials will take 8 to 19 missions to collect.
Additionally, every 6 hours of playime, when completing a mission, you become eligible for:
Assuming you collect as many materials as possible in each mission, the bonus materials will take 2 to 4 missions to collect. (Although the Salvaged materials may not all be available in the same mission.)
The materials are decided when you become eligible for them, so if new materials are added to the game, everyone will start eligible for zero of them, and if you fail to pick up a material in a mission, it won't magically turn into a different material next time you see it. Within each category, a pickup for each material is equally rare.
The quantity of materials picked up at once is random and decided when you pick up the material:
During this beta, only collecting crafting materials is possible. We want to see how players interact with the crafting materials before we decide on any recipes. After the crafting beta is over, the first craftable items will be stat-tracking versions of weapons you already have access to.
We don't have any form of microtransactions to speed up crafting or economy that requires a time commitment to make items valuable, so crafting an item will be "instant" once you have the required materials and blueprint. Since nothing in computer networking is truly instant, a better comparison would be that it will take about as long as picking up a crafting material from the floor in a mission or uploading a score to the leaderboard. Basically, there will be no artificial delay.
There is no player-to-player trading in Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop. However, an in-game shop may be unlockable later to convert crafting materials you have extras of into an in-game currency.
The only way crafting will affect gameplay is by adding crafting materials to be found in missions. Crafted items, at least at the start of the system's full release, will only be cosmetic, and gameplay changes like equipment that differs in non-cosmetic ways will be available through other related systems.
There will not be any "consumable" items like potions or boosters. Once you obtain an item, you will keep it until you intentionally destroy it or turn it into something else. Items you consume during a mission, like a box of grenades, are independent of the inventory item; for example, dropping a weapon during a mission will not remove it from your inventory.
Yes, we have plans for several new weapons. The crafting and contract systems are a required step before we can work on adding them.
Yes, we are planning to add unlockable marines later down the road, but we can't announce any more specific plans yet.
Contracts are persistent objectives that will exist outside of traditional missions. Think of them like Operations in Counter-Strike, the ConTracker in Team Fortress 2, the City Crawl in Dota Underlords, Nightwave in Warframe, or Assignments in Deep Rock Galactic.
Contract Campaigns will be short, self-contained stories that can be played as extra objectives during normal gameplay to unlock item rewards including medals, new weapons, crafting materials, new marines, and possibly other things in the future.
The first eight Contract Campaigns are planned to be (titles are placeholders):
[This section is not yet true; the crafting beta has not yet begun.]
In the beta branch, you can find crafting materials in missions, and collecting any material in the beta branch will grant you a one-time gift of two strange (stat-tracking) weapons of your choice.
You can keep the strange weapons after the beta ends, and they will also work in the non-beta branch. Once the beta ends, the gift will no longer be available to players who have not obtained it.
There are currently two sources of Crafting Material Locations, which are invisible tokens that can be converted into actual crafting materials by finding them in a mission. The first is playing for 30 minutes, available once per week, and the second is playing for 6 hours, repeatable indefinitely. The weekly source of Crafting Material Locations grants more tokens than the "extended" source. There is a notification on the main menu when Crafting Material Locations are found. Crafting Material Locations do not expire.
Missions may be marked as containing crafting materials in the mission chooser. Generally, all missions will be marked, but some materials (Salvaged Materials) are only available in certain missions. Up to 5 materials can spawn per mission. If multiple players have materials available, the materials will appear in the same locations, but may not necessarily be the same type of materials.
Materials spawn near walls, crates, other solid objects, and cliffs. They're always within reach of at least one place that bot marines are instructed to stand, so you should be able to find them without taking time away from normal mission objectives to search. In short, they'll be in a place you should go near to a place you can't go. If you don't find a material during a mission, the Crafting Material Location will remain until you do. Crafting Material Locations are not tied to specific missions or locations within missions, but they do maintain the type of material that they represent. (If you don't pick up scrap metal, you'll find scrap metal later that you can pick up.)
One of the rules for the development of Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop is that we don't compete with the game's Steam Workshop. Any cosmetic mod that is currently available on the workshop will continue to work as it always has, and all missions included with the game will always be available to all players.
The cosmetics being added as part of the crafting system are not model replacements, particle effects, or retextures. Those will continue to be shared on the Steam Workshop. Medals and strange weapons are examples of what we mean when we say "cosmetics".