Responders - we’re only a few weeks away from our major November patch: the REINFORCEMENT UPDATE (0.2.0), which will include a large number of improvements to the core game, hundreds of bug fixes, and new features to play with. Players can expect this update at the end of November.

Between now and the update, we are not expecting to put out further small hotfixes. This ensures that the November update lands on schedule, so that players continue to receive the benefit of more polish and stability. We hope players can understand that we’ve got our heads down for a few weeks to ensure that this major update can make a big impact on the game’s health and replayability.

The November update includes a variety of improvements and additions to the game, but today we’d just like to touch on a few incoming changes…

We’ve heard your feedback about the game’s difficulty needing further work.

In November’s update, players can expect an overhaul to the game’s difficulty. We’re making ammo more scarce, have spent time re-tuning difficulty for player levels, made balance passes on zombie lethality, and more.

Also coming with this patch is improved hit reactions on zombies, so zombie bodies will react more realistically, especially when they’re on the receiving end of your melee weapons and explosives. Here’s a quick glance at some of those improvements in action:
As discussed in our recent livestream last week, there will be a random chance to encounter a new ending sequence to Power Plant before you jump on the helicopter. We know players want more variety and replayability in the game’s (currently) single map, and this remains a high priority.

In this new variant you’ll be completing a series of tasks at different locations within the central Power Plant area, rather than experiencing the “code book” objective in the control room. While the original control room objective will remain as a variant too, and is still probably the “best” way to experience an exciting crescendo at the end of the map, we’re excited for players to get their hands on a different ending experience and want to hear your feedback on how to continue to improve it.

Looking ahead, we’ve also got additional varieties of new objective sequences in development, prioritized for early 2025, to further extend the replayability of the Power Plant map, as we continue work on the second map.

Bug fixes continue to be a major focus for the game. In total, hundreds of bugs have been fixed in this update!

The November update will have a long list of bug fixes, including but not limited to…

• VOIP improvements
  
• Fixed invincible “no legs” crawler zombies
  
• Various fixes to propane tank issues
  
• Fixed cases of zombies sliding
  
• Fixes to bullet falloff damage
  
• Objective markers and interaction fixes
  
• Fixed Zombies spawning too close to players
  
• Fixed various revive bugs
  
• Fixed bug where non-major limbs could not be removed - now hands, feet, and lower arms are all removable
  
• Fixed various Floating flashlight bugs
  
• … and many more!

As shown in our roadmap, we’re excited to be arming players with two new weapons in the November update: the M1911A1 handgun and M7A1 assault rifle. More tools to loot, more one handed firearms (which, of course, work with a flashlight in your other hand), and our first fully automatic firearm.

We’ll be back next week to talk more about the REINFORCEMENT update and beyond.

We know players are also excited about franchise features like Infection and self-sacrifice making their return in No More Room in Hell 2. We are excited about the impact that infection will have on the social chaos of the game. But more than that, we feel it is going to greatly add to the sense of dread and desperation that is what makes the franchise so iconic - especially with the introduction of self-sacrifice, the grim “K button”.

We want to assure players that Infection remains a high priority, and we plan to deliver it as soon as possible after November’s REINFORCEMENT patch. Hopefully, very soon after.

We’ll be back next week to provide clearer timelines for what players can expect, and provide further info on new content and features coming to the November update too!

If you missed it, please give a read of our “The Road from Here” blogpost if you’d like to understand how we’re approaching early access and listening to your feedback every step of the way.

Hello Responders!

Hotfix #3 is now live! Please update your game to make sure you are on the most up to date version of the game.

We have the full patch notes below, and thank everyone for reporting bugs and sharing your feedback with us!

• 2 or more Responders should be able to interact with the same minigame and not have their inputs softlock.
  
• Characters should no longer load in as floating heads.
  
• Dropping and picking up an ammo box with the scavenger skill that multiplied ammo infinitely has been adjusted to only be finitely.
  
• Minigame interactions becoming locked when spamming the interact key if the player is experiencing high ping has been adjusted.
  
• Fixed issue where Zombies could partially clip through doors that they are trying to break down

We thank our playerbase for continuing to report issues and encourage further reporting through https://tornbannerstudios.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new, in-game, or in our Discord.

Hello Responders!

Hotfix 0.1.4 is coming tomorrow! Thank you to our community members for all of your reports and feedback, we appreciate each of them and it has been very helpful in working on this hotfix.

The full patch notes will be released tomorrow, but we wanted to share some of what’s coming in.

The ability to drop and pick up an ammo box multiple times with the scavenger skill is being patched! We have heard from the players who found the exploit and reported it - thank you!
When you drop the ammo and pick it up, you can expect a regular amount of ammo.


Some Responders were floating into session as just a head, which must have made it difficult to take on the zombies. Good news, the head is now bringing its body along. Thank you to everyone who helped us get ahead on this bug.

Further improvements will also be part of this hotfix, so stay tuned for the patch!

If you want to hear more about the Hotfix and Update 1, we talked about both in our Livestream from November 5th!
Follow us on Twitch[www.twitch.tv] to get notified of future streams!

We’ve seen a lot of speculation about the game and realized that in part that is because we haven’t made our stance clear enough as the developers of this project, and realized that it would be useful to provide a more strategic overview of how we are intending to approach Early Access for NMRiH2, and how we are evaluating the launch and your reaction to it.

We released in Early Access because this was the best phase of our production to start getting feedback during ongoing development, in order to meaningfully sculpt the core of the game with you as fans, rather than pretend to engage in that process by releasing a nearly completed and "sealed" product.

We've been upfront about 1.0 being targeted for next year, and we have several major themed updates planned throughout the Early Access period that will provide natural "check-in" points on our progress. We are confident that both fans of the original No More Room in Hell game, but also those without this background, will be excited about what we have in store for you leading to 1.0, so please join us whenever along the journey makes sense for you!

What we’re doing here with the Early Access release is genuinely opening our production process to you as a community and engaging in the process of creating this game together. We see this as a method to get better at making games as a studio, with the hopes of engaging the open support of our community earlier in the process for our future games.

—
Here are some things we have heard you say your dream of No More Room in Hell 2 deserves to be, and our responses.

For those of you who have just joined: we've been committed to weekly hotfixes since launch (see the already-shipped Hotfix 1 & Hotfix 2), with more coming (Hotfix 3 next week!), and a larger update towards the end of November - and of course many further updates through Early Access and beyond.

We have also rolled out a series of server optimization initiatives to improve the live health of the game -- with the majority of players now playing in optimal matchmaking conditions.

Power Plant, the first map in Early Access, is a rural map that focuses on the fear of the unknown, and the sense of discovery in an ocean of darkness. Environments set in cities and towns are of course, equally if not more so iconic to zombie cinema - which NMRiH1 captured so well with its many maps added over years post-launch.

Future maps are planned to hit suburban & urban environments. Each map will have a very different scenario and feel to its objectives. The second map is well underway already, and we look forward to revealing it as soon as it’s ready to show.

It’s our goal for NMRiH2 to present a world that feels like you just stepped out of your door and are witnessing zombie hell on earth.

We are confirming that future zombie types will be based in cinematic realism, like firefighters, policemen or former soldiers.

We also know many players want a more immersive UI / HUD experience in-game. Custom UI is coming in November, allowing you to create a “minimal HUD” and be fully immersed and grounded in the game world without objective markers and so on -- or to simply customize to your liking.

These are just a few examples of how we’re going to continue to fulfill our commitment to a grounded and immersive zombie experience.

We’ve heard your comments about lack of content as well as replayability concerns with the existing Power Plant map and wanted to clarify how this situation will play out over the course of Early Access.

To best serve our production process, ultimately the goal of this first map was to prove out the core of the game play loop, the core of the type of co-op experience we wanted to create. It is our full intention to add dynamic layers of variation, different scenarios like different endings, on top of that and now we have your guidance on where to go with those improvements.

So you can expect this process to repeat such that when something like a new map comes out, it will come in its base form and then get replayable dynamic layers in a series of updates, all while another new map is coming out about to undergo the same process. While other more “standalone” features like weapons, zombie types, player tools, UX and balance & tuning improvements will be sprinkled in at each update.

View our roadmap to see what’s in store currently.

The player fantasy that we looked to hit, and have now heard reinforced that players are looking for, is one that feels desperate, real people who are dealing with an active emergency. Civil Recovery Corps Responders are essentially those who were tough and capable enough to have survived the events of NMRiH1, who now return to help a citizens’ militia.

We have heard the voices who are eager for us to reinforce the vulnerability, bleaker tones and elements of the first game, to hone down on the true horror experience of a zombie apocalypse. This aligns with our own goals for the game and we’ve prioritized further pushes in this direction.

For example, we have ongoing work to reduce ammunition across the map, making each bullet count even more. And future visual and audio aesthetics will lean into the vulnerable flavor of CRC Responders.

Infection is also in active development. Players can expect it to include franchise hallmarks - like sacrificing yourself for the greater good of your team - while also creating compelling new social dynamics inspired by zombie cinema… like the act of keeping your own infection a secret.

We are monitoring everyone’s feedback on having more agency over how to play and enjoy the game the way they like to, such as: making it easier to play with friends, having more accessible options to leave a match without being punished, being able to play at your own speed, and similar thoughts.

This resonates with our team, and we see how it's a top want in the community - so we’re working figuring out the best ways to bring those options to the game and will get back to you soon.

We are also working on more game modes and would love your thoughts so keep those suggestions coming!

--

Thanks for telling us what matters - we can’t wait to show you what our studio can do with this game from these foundations. We are thrilled for the opportunity to make an epic interactive monument to zombie cinema together.

Onto another hotfix next week, with our first full update also around the corner in November!

Hello Responders!

We posted yesterday about what we see in the immediate future of No More Room in Hell 2, and in line with that future, this week’s hotfix is focused on improving the game’s core experience along with bugs and the community requested Invert Mouse option.

Please make sure you have updated your game to be on the latest build.

• Stamina tuning to allow for more melee weapon swings (depending on the weapon)
  
• Invert Y-Axis for Mouse option
  
• Fixed a bug where pipebombs and other explosives had their damage radius reduced.
  
• Fixed the occasional inability to switch to other items in inventory after using bandage
  
• Resolve memory leak on Ultrawide resolutions leading to performance issues on Ultra
  
• Fixed multiple bugs with our revive syringe
  
  • Responders dying shortly after being revived
    
  • Responders being unable to pick up other Responders who self-revived
    
  • Responders going into spectate mode while alive after dying from fall damage and using the syringe
• Prime / 'Red Eyes' zombies now require less headshots in all situations.
  
• Additional fixes

We thank our playerbase for continuing to report issues and encourage further reporting through https://tornbannerstudios.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new, in-game, or in our Discord.

Our second hotfix is planned to release tomorrow.

The hotfix will include:

• Stamina tuning to allow for more melee weapon swings (depending on the weapon)
  
• Invert Y-Axis for Mouse option
  
• Fixed a bug where Pipebombs and other explosives had their damage radius reduced.
  
• Fix the occasional inability to switch to other items in inventory after using bandage
  
• Resolve memory leak on Ultrawide resolutions leading to performance issues on Ultra
  
• Fix multiple bugs with our revive syringe
  
• Prime / 'Red Eyes' zombies now require less headshots in all situations. In most gameplay situations (difficulty, weapon of choice, distance), they should go down with a single headshot.
  
• Additional fixes

As you can see from the list, while improving the game’s core and fixing bugs continue to be our focus, we are now implementing additional improvements to the gameplay experience that should have a positive impact for players. We also heard from all of the Responders asking for Invert Mouse, and we’ve got you.

With our weekly commitment of hotfixes continuing, players can look forward to an additional hotfix next week once again. We’ll have more details on Hotfix 0.1.4 soon.


After several steps were taken to improve our servers and matchmaking over the past week, we feel that the current situation is now substantially improved.

You can read more about the servers work over the past week here.

As of earlier this week, 85% of all matches are now getting matched in their best region or very close to it.

While we will continue to monitor server performance, and will still look to provide updates for further improvements to the matchmaking and online health of the game, you can also help to make us aware of new issues by sending a report to http://nmrih2.com/suppor

It’s now been a week since we launched No More Room in Hell 2 in Early Access. We’ve been doing our utmost to keep the community informed about our efforts to improve the core state of the game. That will continue to be our focus for now, with bug fixing and server stability as our top priorities.

We’ve seen nearly 6,000 people review the game on Steam now, bringing it up to its current Mixed rating - it’s clear that there’s a massive number of players who want this game to succeed as much as we do. It’s of course clear that for a number of players, the Early Access launch didn’t align with their expectations.

NMRiH2 in Early Access launch is meant to lay the foundation for what we truly believe will be a great game. We believe that the current issues with that foundation are addressable - many in the immediate, and others over the long term towards the 1.0 version. No More Room in Hell 2 is still in active development, and we are committed to improve the game, and to add additional content and features to it. Importantly, we will continue to listen to your priorities.

Infection

We know that new and old franchise fans are greatly anticipating the Infection feature. The Infection System is in active development. Players can expect it to include franchise hallmarks - like sacrificing yourself for the greater good of your team - while also creating compelling new social dynamics inspired by zombie cinema… like the act of keeping your own infection a secret.

But let’s not get too excited about that yet - we’ve got work to do on the core Early Access game that players own right now, and over the past week of listening to the community wants and needs, stabilizing that core is what we’ve got to focus on right now.

Our first hotfix was delivered yesterday, which tackled some localized issues that players have been reporting, as we continue to work rapidly and proactively on improving the situation.

We are committing to rolling out hotfixes on a weekly basis for now, so preparations for a second hotfix next week are already underway. We will also be looking into our first pass at balance improvements and smaller fixes on the experiential side.

Our aim is to deliver hotfixes as often as we can to address issues in batches rather than all at once. For now, we are prioritizing incremental improvements that can be rolled out rapidly to keep making progress on this situation.

Since launch day, we have rolled out a series of server optimization initiatives to improve the live health of the game -- essentially, getting more players playing with reasonable ping.

You can read more about the servers work over the past week here.

Yesterday we made improvements to server performance in Asia and US-West.

Today we rolled out an optimization of our matchmaking parameters to ensure we’re maximizing performance for the highest number of players. Players globally are going to be matched closer to their best ping region. As we iron this out actively, sometimes these changes might lead to increased waiting time or smaller matches but should massively help decrease latency which is causing perceived bugs.

In order to focus on delivering hotfixes and addressing critical issues, we’ve reduced the overall scope of our intended “Update 1” (which is separate to hotfixes) that was initially planned for the end of November. The date of this update may also change as we continue to work on the core improvements to the game.

This means that “in development” content and features discussed in our roadmap, although not canceled, will now take more time to come to the game. In particular, Responder Respawn and Firefighter Zombie types may now be coming later than the first proper Update 1.

These are features we are not hearing of an urgent need for, in the community, as we firmly believe that most players are today looking for quality-of-life “game health” improvements. Responder Respawn will be an ability to, under certain conditions, respawn as a new permadeath character if you die mid-match. This was a feature we had originally planned as a priority addition post-launch, because of our own assumptions about areas the game needed fast attention on. We're trying our best here to actively listen to community feedback at every level. We know that will mean rearranging, even potentially removing features from the roadmap, and replacing them with others - if those features don't resonate with the feedback from the community.

We still have all of our exciting content and feature plans highlighted in the Roadmap in the back of our minds but are focusing on improving what we presented to players on Day 1 of Early Access.

Despite setbacks at Early Access launch, we’re truly excited to be on a road towards a completed 1.0 vision of No More Room in Hell 2. We feel that it’s really beneficial that we have this game out in the hands of our community of Early Access players, while the game remains in active development, so that the end result of this game at its proper launch next year will deliver on its promise.

We’re seeing that the game’s atmosphere and one-of-a-kind co-op gameplay are genuinely resonating with players. We share your optimism about the game's potential.

We know we still have a ways to go, and hope this continues to be a project that our players are excited to watch grow and improve towards its full launch.

Below is a sampling of some key areas that we’re prioritizing to address. We’re aware of these issues and more, but it will be an ongoing process throughout Early Access for us to address everything we’re hearing and seeing in the community.

General technical issues and bugs
We are aware that the game has a high number of technical issues, including severe bugs, performance problems, and server instability. These issues significantly hinder the gameplay experience, leading to widespread frustration among players.

This area is our number one focus to address, with many of the server issues rapidly improving already due to our server optimization work.

Zombie movement and behavior
We know that AI behavior and movement bugs involving zombies fell short of expectations. We have kicked off a Zombie locomotion and behavior strike team to tackle some of the issues around locomotion (warping, phasing, teleporting, etc.). These bugs and issues are currently exacerbated by poor server performance, but will certainly need to be properly fixed down the line to improve things further.

Server and Connectivity Issues
As we’ve detailed since launch day, we are highly aware that server and connectivity issues are a significant problem, with players experiencing high ping, lag, and disconnections. These issues disrupt gameplay and make it difficult to enjoy the game. We feel that we’ve made great progress on this, with the majority of improvements not actually requiring a hotfix, and it remains a focus until we feel it’s in the right place.

Replayability
While we know the majority of players are looking for quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes, we’re aware that players with a high number of hours in the game are hoping for further replayability and more reasons to come back to Power Plant. As we mention above, our current focus on bug fixing and hotfixes may mean that some of our planned future content arrives a bit later than we’d hoped. However, we are already at work in implementing solutions to provide more replayability to our first map, in particular the final sequence, and look forward to discussing this more in the near future.

We hope everyone enjoys playing No More Room in Hell 2 over the weekend, and look forward to sharing further news on our plans again next week.

Help to make us aware of new issues and feedback by sending a report to nmrih2.com/support.

For this hotfix, we are focusing on a selection of bugs along with continuing to work on connectivity and matchmaking with more fixes to come in time.

We thank our playerbase for reporting issues, and encourage further reporting through nmrih2.com/support, in-game, or in our Discord.

• Shotgun damage was inconsistent and sometimes did no damage at all.
  
• Responders were unable to connect nodes (wires to wires) and encountered a soft lock while in the wiring mini-game in the Cooling Tower
  
• Weapon animations would end up out-of-sync and misaligned when performing various actions, such as picking up weapons, swapping weapons, or sprinting.
  
• Generator would become locked after depositing a gas canister at Farmhouse, Lookout Tower, and Gas Station.
  
• Nameplate VOIP icon states were inverted – appearing to be speaking when silent and vice versa.
  
• Various optimizations to improve server performance.

Please restart your game and make sure you are on the most recent version.

Tomorrow we plan to deliver a hotfix to address a selection of issues present in the game. This hotfix is not meant to resolve every major issue currently present in the game, and we are aware that there are other gameplay-impacting bugs still present.

Our team is continuing to work around the clock to resolve critical issues, but it’s also vital that we don’t rush out any updates that would create further risk for the health of the live game.

Included in tomorrow’s Hotfix 1:

• Server optimizations to improve performance, which should help to address gameplay lag - issues like slow hit reactions, zombies teleporting as well as some animation issues and rubber banding.
  
• First person animation fixes for holding weapons incorrectly
  
• Fixing bugs with with the wiring and generator mini games
  
• Fixing shotguns not damaging zombies
  
• Nameplates on VOIP not working properly
  
• And some minor fixes

Stay tuned for the full hotfix notes tomorrow when the patch goes live.

Improvements to servers globally are already underway.

As we reported yesterday, mismatches in cloud instance performance have contributed to the widespread reports of poor ping, latency, and server performance.

We are in the midst of rolling out changes to our servers to see expected improvements for Asia and US-West players; those improvements have been actively underway since earlier today. We also took steps to improve the server environment for South America players earlier today. Further improvements will be actively underway for the later part of the day, as well.

Players should expect these server changes to have a positive impact quite rapidly, with many active improvements occurring over the course of today.

We expect that a variety of issues players are experiencing as apparent game bugs (slow hit reactions, zombies teleporting, animation issues, rubber banding and more) are partially a result of gameplay lag caused by the server situation. As mentioned above, we expect our server optimization and hotfix to contribute to alleviating these problems. Focusing on fixing the high ping means we can rule it out when investigating bugs.

Any critical gameplay bugs are being triaged for further patches so we can determine a prioritization list and gauge a timeline for fixes to each issue.

This is not a confirmed or exhaustive list of what we’ve prioritized, but we’re aware of a high number of complaints about: voice chat issues, disappearing zombies, floating guns, floating player heads, and item/button interaction, among other issues. We will do our utmost to keep our community informed about our progress on resolving these issues.

Non-gameplay affecting visual bugs or more minor gameplay-impacting bugs (i.e. those that only appear to be affecting a minority of players) are not being prioritized for fixes at this time and would be addressed further down the line. We hope that players can understand our need to address the more urgent issues, and to a certain extent throughout Early Access, we do expect some gameplay, audio and visual bugs to take much more time to be addressed than others.

We massively appreciate every player’s support and patience as we continue to work to resolve issues in the live game. As always, you can also help to make us aware of new issues by sending a bug report to http://nmrih2.com/support.