In Development: PvE Mission “Wages of Sin”

[Haswell 290]

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-pve-mission-wages-sin

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We are fully aware that new regular PvE missions that appear in rotations are one of the most popular pieces of content, which is why we are working on a new one called Wages of Sin.

To those of you who are participating in the Perihelion event, the name might sound familiar – indeed, the mission is an in-game recreation of three of this event’s missions: Wages of Sin, Revelations and Spoils of War. The event features a lot of lore and a lengthy story that can be read here but, in summation:

You play the role of Samuel Thorpe, a mercenary tasked by a company called Perihelion to train its security force in an Arizona desert. One night, you are woken by one of the officers, Gail Espinoza and the sounds of gunfire in the night – a local U.S. Army base is under attack by a mysterious enemy!

Now, if you’ve read the Perihelion event’s story, you already know what happens next but the players who haven’t will be in for a surprise and, more importantly, a tough fight.

In this PvE mission, we are taking as much of your feedback into account as we can. No more immortal drones, enemies spawning right behind you, rooftop infantry, enemy mortars or broken Hunter AFVs killing your vehicles with a single shot. Instead, you’ll see plenty of action that returns to the roots of what makes Armored Warfare PvE fun.

The mission will take place in Arizona in the night but there’s no need to worry – we will not be using the infravision mechanics as they are not exactly popular. Some of its elements will seem familiar to you while others are brand new.

Since we are working on several new assets and other improvements for it, the mission will not be ready before summer. We wanted to let you know ahead of time that it’s coming (along with plenty of other content!) so that you have something to look forward to.

We definitely hope you’ll enjoy playing it as much as we are enjoying making new things for you and, as always:

Bold claims that the map will be fun to play on, seeing how the previous new desert maps were more or less flops.

While it's nice to see the AD1 map reused, I have my reservations since the map is very much one big corridor for players to push in one direction, and not too enjoyable to play on with squishy vehicles given the corridor nature.

Seeing campaign elements tie in directly with the game development is encouraging at least.

[Zafir 9]

Well, if you barely release anything in years, any new (real) content is sort of popular. Also, for how many months are some secondaries bugged now (objective is invincible) on the desert maps?

But at last beggars can't be choosers, even if they are supposed to be paying customers.

Fingers crossed.

[Arto 100]

I actually like all of the new desert maps except the bridge one, other than the secondaries not working half the time.
Desert Fox in particular is one of my favourite maps rn.

[knutliott 41]

The description, and particularly the name of the mission, imply to me that this is a Spec Ops mission and not regular PvE.

[Haswell 290]

[ceejee007 2]

all I read are promises, just promises......

But I can't play (or would pay) for promises....

Think that it really would be time that AW starts fulfilling their promises and start to deliver.

In our clan we are losing players who lost their patience regarding improvements, balance and new maps.

[Haswell 290]

An update after so long. https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/developer-diary-wages-sin-pve-mission

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One of the previously announced features is the Wages of Sin PvE mission and, like with the Namer, the announcement took place quite some time ago. Now, do not worry – the mission’s still coming in November, but as the earlier article suggests, it was supposed to arrive much earlier – in fact, it was supposed to coincide with the end of the Perihelion event as the mission is closely tied to it.

 

Click the image to open a larger version

 

The reason it was delayed was the complicated nature of the map itself. In Armored Warfare, maps do not exist as separate terrain layout on which you add events such as maps and triggers. They exist in several layers and each of the layers does something different – voiceover, terrain interaction, objectives, you name it. These layers are then compiled together into what you see in the game as missions or maps. In many cases, these layers are closely tied to each other, which is why it’s not possible to simply cut away pieces of maps and create other missions or PvP/PvE maps from them.

 

Click the image to open a larger version

 

But that’s not what really delayed the mission as we were effectively ready for that. The real reason was that, unbeknownst to us, the map part of the mission was made in a very specific way as to only work with the American Dream Special Operation (where it originated). And, as a cherry on the top, it wasn’t even made by the developers of the game, it was outsourced. In short, our attempts to make the mission work created an incredible amount of bugs that had to be squashed.

What followed were many months of investigations that allowed us a very deep insight into the workings of the game’s mechanics as many things had to be programmed from scratch. The good news is that the fruits of this labor will not only bring you the Wages of Sin mission – the lessons from it will be used in all future PvE content as well, including new Special Operations.

 

Click the image to open a larger version

 

As for the mission itself – compared to the old screenshots, it underwent significant improvements to make it more distinct form the original operation. Especially the Perihelion camp (starting area) got fleshed out, as did the military base at the end.

There’s one feature that we weren’t able to implement though, compared to the original article – the mission will use the general AI vehicle pool (that includes everyone’s favorite Hunter) and we had to tune the difficulty and bot composition to match that. Otherwise everything is working and we are in the final polishing stages of work. Regardless, the mission will be on the difficult side.

 

Click the image to open a larger version

 

We are planning to deploy the mission until the end of the year, presumably in November. We hope that you'll enjoy the mission even with a delay and, as always:

 

[Arcticwolfbz 0]

ok question , i did get to play this mission once and now it doesnt seem to be on the map rotation . did they remove it to fix the bugs?

 

[ceejee007 2]

Did played the mission myself. And a few things crossed my mind:

1) You need a decent group of (more or less) working together to get this done. In case of all TD tanks, you get screwed. You need some " tank bunkers" to soak up the dmg, with support of TDs to help you. 

2) Tier 8 is very hard to do because of a lot of tier X AI tanks.

3) Looks to me as the beginning of a storyline if you listen to the " commanders talk" 

But overall, I like this " harder game". Is an improvement for the game.

Edited November 16, 2022 by ceejee007
type failure (see edit history)

[Aericar 1]

I'ved spend more then 3 hours over the last week, just doing other things on my other screen waiting for Wages of Sin. Its never come up for me. Is it still in the game?

 

[Schlock 10]

Yep, you just got unlucky with map rotation. But I think it is like Perseus, Raiding Party and some other maps only in T7-10 queue, it can't be played in T6 and below.

[Haswell 290]

It's still there, just not showing up every day and subject to the 2hr long rotation cycles.

Here is an excellent guide by @Vadim

 

[Vadim 78]

1 hour ago, Haswell said:

It's still there, just not showing up every day and subject to the 2hr long rotation cycles.

Here is an excellent guide by @Vadim

 

Note, that respawns have been supposedly fixed. Other than that, guide is accurate

[Aericar 1]

4 hours ago, Schlock said:

Yep, you just got unlucky with map rotation. But I think it is like Perseus, Raiding Party and some other maps only in T7-10 queue, it can't be played in T6 and below.

Was sitting on a tier 9, cause i knew this. Still dident come up (sunday i spent 1 hour 20mins just watching the rotation, and watching YT, still no Sins)

[ceejee007 2]

It is there, played it several times, and the guide is very useful. Especially for player who normally " rush into the fire".

Godspeed.