Hello everyone!
Sorry for the slight delay on these ones again, things appear pretty busy over at Splash Damage HQ right now 
But alas, here are some more dev questions and answers for December! All the questions below were submitted by the community:
Can we ever get a āmuteā button that mutes text chat as well?
If you mute a player in-game using the TAB menu this will also mute their text chat too. We donāt currently have a āMute Allā function, but it is something to look into.
Will Execution ever be a comp game-mode?
It would be great to see Execution as a stand-alone competitive game-mode and it is a possibility for the future, but we donāt want to split our matchmaking player base to that extent just yet.
Will you ever make it so that when someone is repairing/defusing/planting, unless the person is an engineer, they simply do not do the animation?
The repair animation currently already stops playing if someone ābetterā is doing the objective. We recently updated this so that the Merc who is more proficient in repairing will automatically V-say they are repairing as an extra hint to the other player that their presence is not required. We feel that this, along with the animation not displaying is enough to let players know theyāre not assisting the repair/defuse. We will revisit this though if it continues to be an issue.
Any ETA for public party match-making?
We cannot specify when as the date is currently unknown, but this is something we want to focus on and get in the game.
Could we ever see mission progress WHILE in a match (not just after, or in lobbies)?
This isnāt planned but is a good idea.
I have some useless CW cards that Iām likely never going to be able to trade with people, because they are just bad loadouts. Will these always be useless to me?
We have some ideas about what we could do in the future with cards like these, but as nothing is concrete yet we have no further information at this time.
Is Dome likely to get further improvements (such as changing the actual delivery point on the first objective)?
While weāre always open to making changes, at the moment we focussing on creating new maps for you, and plan revisiting existing maps in the future.
Is there any chance we will see some loadout changes in the future? (Such as loadouts actually receiving augment changes in order to balance them so there isnāt one ābestā loadout for each merc)
Just as we do with Weapons, weāre currently working on making the weaker Augments more desirable so Loadout Cards become more balanced. The ideal end-goal is that all Loadout Cards are equally viable, it just comes down to personal preferences and play style.
If you guys have any questions, keep an eye out on the forums/subreddit as I will no doubt post another question request thread for another Q&A in the future!
- Faraleth