To say Once Human’s new Visional Wheel S4: Gravity Abyss season has not got off to the smoothest start would be filed under “Understatement”, with developer Starry Studio apologising to players after a wave of complaints about lag, crashes, confusing objectives, and rewards that did not feel worth the effort.
Gravity Abyss went live last week, bringing new aerial events, Riftwalker battles, Gravity Crystals, Echoite crates, and weightless areas to the survival shooter. However, the launch appears to have been messier than intended, particularly around the Aerial Hunt mode, which saw enough players piling in at once to cause server performance problems.
In a new developer blog, the team says some features “did not meet our standards for stability or overall experience at launch,” adding that it has spent the last few days working on fixes and balance adjustments. As an apology, all players will receive Gravity Crystal x1,000, Abyssal Core (Epic) x1, Gravity Abyss Deviation Selection II x1, and Downstar/Aero Mod Crate: Nightmare I x5 via in-game mail on June 3.
The biggest fixes are aimed at Aerial Hunt, where Starry Studio says it has now made load optimisations to reduce lag and crashes. Riftwalkers getting stuck, or rewards disappearing before players could claim them, has also reportedly been fixed, although the team says it will keep monitoring the mode.
Rewards have been improved too. Aerial Hunt now gives out more Gravity Crystals, Deviations, and Mod Crates, while the drop rate for Abyssal Cores has been increased. The personal reward requirement has also been simplified, so players only need to hit the required damage threshold rather than worry about more awkward objectives.
Riftwalker difficulty has also been toned down, with reduced HP and lower enemy difficulty in some scenarios. Meanwhile, Phase 5 of Aerial Hunt and Gravity Integrator gameplay will now count towards Legendary Mod Crate pity progress, with additional compensation planned for players affected before the fix.
Elsewhere, Echoite Crates should now rise more slowly and stay visible for longer, while improved visual effects are planned for June 10. The Gravity Crystal weekly cap has also been raised to 10,000, with reduced acquisition efficiency after that point rather than a hard stop.
It is a fairly hefty round of emergency repairs, and probably not the start Gravity Abyss needed. Still, the response is at least pretty direct, with Starry Studio admitting where things went wrong and trying to mitigate player rage – which of course, being online, is more than it needs to be.
Authored by
Paul McNally
Paul McNally has been around consoles and computers since his parents bought him a Mattel Intellivision in 1980. He has been a prominent games journalist since the 1990s, spending over a decade as editor of popular print-based video games and computer magazines, including a market-leading PlayStation title. Paul has written high-end gaming content for GamePro, Official Australian PlayStation Magazine, PlayStation Pro, Amiga Action, Mega Action, ST Action, GQ, Loaded, and the The Mirror. He has also hosted panels at retro-gaming conventions and can regularly be found guesting on gaming podcasts and Twitch shows. Believing that the reader deserves actually to enjoy what they are reading is a big part of Paul’s ethos when it comes to gaming journalism, elevating the sites he works on above the norm.
