The Future of Forever Skies and PS5 Patch

To Our Forever Skies Community,

First off, we want to thank each and every one of you who supported Forever Skies on PlayStation 5. The response has been beyond what we expected, so thank to every single of you.

That said, we have seen that a portion of PlayStation players feel disappointed that the game didn’t live up to their hopes and expectations. Since we always had plans to support the game after release, we want everyone to know that our plans are now to improve Forever Skies as a whole based on this feedback.

“Good or bad, our intention has never been to walk away from Forever Skies, so after seeing where we can improve the game, we are for sure not going to call this 'good enough' and just move on. We’re here to do the work, make the game better, and show you that we’re listening. These days, it’s clearer than ever that trust and admiration from players are what make a studio thrive in the long term. That’s exactly what we intend to do.”- Andrzej Blumenfeld, Far From Home CEO

Where Are We Going To Focus Our Attention?

After a lot of analysis and looking through comments, reviews, and overall sentiment research, we feel the bulk of negative feelings towards the game on console can be grouped into 4 key areas:

• Technical issues that block your progress or break immersion

• Performance problems that break immersion

• Repetitive environments that hinder any sense of exploration and variety

• Tedious gameplay mechanics that can become boring or lack meaningful engagement

  
  

So our plan now is to work on free updates and fixes that we will release regularly as we push to Forever Skies to match and exceed the expectations many had for it.

Some of these updates will be pushed out quite quickly, while others will need more time and work for us to get right, so we ask for your patience and understanding here. Getting things right takes a bit of time and room to work.

How Does the Current Patch Align With Our Plans?

It is also worth noting that today's patch focuses primarily on a number of issues we were working on before we properly identified the four key areas of improvement. In general, this update targets a collection of specific bugs we’ve gathered since the start of 1.0. It also adds small adjustments, balances, and a handful of minor game changes that the team felt were something we could do and resolve now. While these changes are not overly tied to the broader priorities highlighted previously, they do help lay the groundwork for the more substantial fixes and updates we want to do.

Thank you for being here and speak soon.

-Team Far From Home

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PS5 PATCH - 01.000.012

ADDED:

• Ingredients Auto Crafting works for the Research Station

• New loading screens

• New death screen background

• Cockroaches’ hideout lore scenes added to some locations

• Petit Astre and Petit Bruiseflower now have Boiled versions

• Visual indicator showing the front of a device when in placement mode

• Aim Assist for Crossbow on controllers added

• Aim Assist Scale options setting added to the Controls menu

• Auto-saving is now allowed outside of the airship (on all locations). Other conditions added include auto-saving being blocked in cinematics, in-game cutscenes, and elevators.

CHANGED:

• Lore scene tablets mesh was changed to differentiate them from the main quest ones (work in progress)

• Once read, lore tablets shouldn’t spawn again

• Tweaks in FPP Knife animation timing

• FPP Knife and crouch FPP Knife animations improvements – using knife animations will randomize with each use

• The Technology Printer UI has been slightly reorganised, so it is more readable

• The scanning shaking animation effect is slightly reduced

• Failed scanning animation shakes are highly reduced

• Knife holding animation adjusted, sped up, diversified and optimized

• Different player damage indicator. Type post-process FXs changed and optimized

• Mantis jump attack animation smoothed

• Inverting the controller’s vertical axis doesn’t change the inversion for the Item Select menu

• Rebalanced flying debris in the Overgrown Ruins (red) biome - more Synthetics, less Biomass

• Airship parts requiring fibreglass cost reduced from 10 to 5

• Fibreglass crafting quantity raised to 10 (was 5)

• Ingredients Auto Crafting is turned on by default for all

• Glass Railings 2x1 are to be found in the Research Computers

• Half Walls and Organic Half Walls are to be found on Research Computers

• Lobster Chilli Peppers quantity per plant on Greenhouse Tower locations reduced

• Pipes, Sockets and Cross Pipes crafting prices rebalanced

• Tech Fragments item stack increased (100 >> 250)

• Technology Tokens item stack increased (100 >> 250)

• Socket item stack increased (10 >> 25)

• Cross Pipe item stack increased (10 >> 25)

• Pipe item stack increased (10 >> 100)

• Chitin item stack increased (10 >> 50)

• Recycler now takes item durability into account, giving fewer resources in the process

• Several items moved to a proper tab in the Research Station (Chitin Armor, Medkit, Advanced Medkit, Brain Cleanser, Capsaicin, Haemoglobin Purifier, Mydriasis Inhibitor, Crystal Battery, Large Bottle, Charged Mine, Poisonous Mine, Decoy, Cutting Tool, Motion Detector)

FIXED:

• Fixed a bug with huge FPS drops when entering Underdust and during lift travel

• Fixed a bug where Sprinklers didn’t water all properly placed Gardening Pots

• Fixed a bug for clients joining a co-op session with Medium Oxygen Tank showing Oxygen 100/130

• Fixed a small issue of players’ toes sticking out of Medical Station

• Fixed a bug where Item Select menu didn’t allow changing type of used Bolts

• Fixed a bug with Small Cockpit bottom clipping through the ceiling to the bottom floor

• Fixed a bug where quick move didn’t work on liquids stored in Bottles

• Fixed a bug where stacked items didn’t show all available actions when they were put into backpack inventory slots

• Fixed a bug where Technology Printer incorrectly displayed inventory count instead of purchase quantity

• Fixed a bug in Underdust where players couldn’t climb a ladder shortcut to Medium Oxygen Tank platform due to collisions

• Fixed a bug where Machine Scraps casing could block an airship from being powered up on a Workshop

• Fixed a bug with Extractor’s recharging sound being audible from far away

• Fixed a memory leak on airship physics

• Fixed a bug with Webling Larva's moving animation

• Fixed a bug with Mantis Glands still to be found in the game, while removed from it already

• Fixed a bug where player could get stung by Thorn Bees through the wall in the Underdust

• Fixed a bug where player is unable to join any session after accepting a session from Steam Invite and then returning to the main menu

• Fixed a bug in Legacy building mode where players couldn’t place Engines on Room frames

• Fixed a bug with duplicated Research Computer at the Wild Habitat

• Fixed a bug where Database entry was missing Floating Glass description

• Fixed a bug where Database entry North Star fruits were described as Sleeping Lilly ones

• Fixed a bug where building a Metal Collector before the quest path instructed to do so, resulted in quest not being completed without moving or crafting another instance of this device

• Fixed a bug where players couldn’t skip intro when it had played for several seconds already

• Fixed a bug where Automatic Extractors couldn’t extract objects which player was extracting in the first place and didn’t finish the extraction process

• Duplicated Mission Report 05 removed from the Database

• Fixed a bug where the Scanner’s UI was visible during cutscenes when those were triggered with an active Scanner

• Fixed a crash when DLSS Frame Generator was working and player opened the on-screen keyboard

• Level art on different locations and biomes updated and optimized

• Fixes to all locations and POIs spawning points so they won’t interfere with each other anymore

• Fixes in some wrongly displayed textures over the various locations

• Fixes in many object collisions for a smoother player movement or to allow loot collection

• More general optimization fixes

KNOWN ISSUES:

• There is a rare bug where extracted objects are pushing the Extractor’s beam away, not allowing to extract themselves properly

• On some Workshop locations, both the Power Generator and Technology Printer may be missing. Finding another instance of The Workshop should help (until we fix it)

• Small Oxygen Tank can be dropped but cannot be crafted. It blocks Oxygen progression for bigger tanks

• There are rare desync problems in a co-op session, where clients see other things than the host (some objects don’t update their states properly in a co-op session)

• There is a bug where the player’s position while using the Medical Station changes when the airship is flying

• The pipe blocking the way in Underdust Tunnels stays in the same position, even though the player has moved it.

• Sometimes the debris pushes the Extractor’s beam away, making extracting them difficult.