Hi Truckers,

It’s been a few, huh? How are things? You guys good? Cool. Us too. We’re actually really good, because we finally managed to get the mega patch into testing. That’s right; we’re almost ready to push the final patch before we set our sights on a standalone version of STL!

As a quick recap, this patch includes:

• Cash and Upgrades are now persistent between levels (they never reset)
• Collectable functionality overhaul
• Rare Crafting pieces are easier to get
• Clover changes
• Upgrade price changes
• Buffs start at 20 minutes
• Fleet pricing rework, UI improvements
• Offline progress cap reduction
• Loot table rework
• Crafting rework including smart sorting
• Players can now reset their game and start over
• Tuning, optimization, and bug fixes

Obviously the big one here is fittingly in the #1 spot on the list; persistent cash and upgrades. We made this decision simply because cash and upgrades felt less exciting and meaningful when they reset every time you level up. It felt almost like a punishment for an accomplishment which is antithetical to our entire philosophy; everybody wins. It also made re-upgrading (because I don’t know what else to call it) tedious, because you’d hit a new level with fatter cash rewards and immediately go upgrade your truck 20 times. You also lost all of your cash, with no carry over or reward system where you could redeem that excess cash for a persistent upgrade system which is actually something we worked on at one point. Point is, we realized with cash and upgrades being literally permanent, you always had a goal to hit and when you hit that extra engine upgrade it felt good. It brought a lot of value back to cash itself, made rewards easier to track, and actually makes the player consider which upgrade to get instead of “whichever one I can afford.”

Once we did this, however, we created a ripple and had to reevaluate route rewards, slots, upgrade costs, collectables, and other stuff that we basically broke making this change. So we did that. But something still felt off no matter what we did.

Eventually we realized that cash numbers were simply too high. If you’re tracking a high score, it doesn’t matter if it’s in the billions because you’re not subtracting, weighing it against the cost of a product, or doing basically any math at all. When it becomes a resource, however, suddenly it’s an unmanageable pain in the ass if the numbers get too high. We simply looked at the highest source of income, route rewards, and nerfed it into the ground. And everything clicked. And we were done just kidding because we had to go back and rework all of that shit all over again.

But it was worth it. The whole game feels different now. Officially, everything you earn in STL is a permanent result. Nothing is taken from the player or reset. I’ve been testing STL for the 102981st time and I’m still having fun. Weird.

Beyond that, we reworked tables so legendaries and beyond feel… legendary. Rares are actually rare. You get the gist. Buffs start at 20 minutes because 10 was annoying me. Fleet is like, a new game at this point. It went from a slow grindy sim to more of an arcade idle game. You’ll see what I mean when you’re swapping drivers, their gear, and leveling them up way faster than before trying to find that sweet spot for extra crates. We tweaked the UI as well so instead of “Total Progress” there’s an actual number so you can track your progress.

Collectables used to be a chance to spawn at set intervals with clovers improving that spawn chance. They now spawn always, with clovers reducing the intervals.

We squished routes, made crafting pieces easier to get, added smarter sorting, and other sexy improvements. But you’ll have to wait a little bit while we test the game thoroughly because we did that thing we did one other time where we built a mega patch that requires mega testing and now it’s taking mega f&$#ing forever so I’m sorry stop yelling at me.

Anyways, we’ll keep ya posted. Oh and on a side note, Mike and I are both moved in to our new homes so we can finally get back to literally anything other than moving because moving is the worst.

Awkwardly Long Hugs,

Dan & Mike