Once Human's Fifth Meta Hotline: Chat, Crates, and Camera Shakes

If you’ve been wandering the strange lands of Nalcott for a while, you know how easy it is to get lost in the rhythm of survival, looting, and those quiet little moments between gunfights. The dev team has been like a busy beekeeper lately, buzzing around the Feedback Platform to collect every drop of player sentiment. With the v2.3.7 update, the new Feedback Hot Charts section appeared like a freshly painted bulletin board, pinned right on the homepage. Sign in, give a thumbs up to an idea you love, or hit that dislike button if a suggestion makes you roll your eyes – it all shows up in real time. The team uses those charts to decide what to fix next, and honestly? It feels nice to have a voice that actually reaches the workshop.

Today marks the fifth Meta Hotline, and as I log in on this July 9, 2026, the Hot Charts standings stare back at me with new numbers and old debates. Let me walk you through what got discussed, what got shelved, and what made me say, “Wait, really?”

Right off the bat, let’s talk about chat timestamps. I’ll be honest – I’ve fumbled through busy chat channels trying to figure out if that “LFG” was from two minutes ago or two hours. But the devs decided against adding a timestamp display. After poking around the current chat flow, they feel the information density is still readable, and tossing in timestamps would just add visual noise. I get it, but my paranoid brain still wishes I could prove I didn’t miss that invite on purpose.

Next up: casual mini-games. Oh, my heart did a little flip when I saw this one. Many Metas (that’s us, the players) wanted something lighter to do between the exploration and combat – think fishing but with more giggles. The team adopted the suggestion, but here’s the twist: they aren’t rushing to build a separate minigame menu. Instead, they’re expanding fishing gameplay and experimenting with relaxing, social-oriented content that fits Once Human’s vibe. So, no standalone card table yet, but I’m keeping my fishing rod ready – and my fingers crossed.

Now, the part that made me squint at my screen: screen shake. The game already has a slider for shake intensity, and you can turn most of it down to a whisper. But some Metas wanted to disable the recoil shake when firing completely. The devs firmly said no to that, because recoil is part of a weapon’s soul, part of that visceral feedback. I mean, imagine firing a heavy shotgun and your screen staying dead still; it would feel like shooting a water pistol. They ask if we notice abnormal shake elsewhere, so if your crosshair does a little dance during a calm walk, do report it.

Then we dive into the Stardust Secret Crate discussion, which felt more like group therapy. Duplicate rewards, missing that one skin, opening crate after crate only to hear the sad trombone of RNG. The devs explained that the crate is a reward pool with no guarantee each pull changes your future odds – randomness for the sake of excitement, they say. No plans to tweak the probability core, but they heard us: the real pain is the time limit during a Battle Pass cycle. So, they’re cooking up ways to give us more chances to grab core rewards later, and adding a pity/guarantee mechanism to soften the blows. The plan is in motion, aiming for Battle Pass S14. Fingers itching for that last cosmetic? There’s hope yet.

A feature I didn’t expect to get debated: one-click Deviation energy replenishment. Some of us wanted to hit one button and refill our combat Deviations mid-fight, cutting down on fiddly menus. The devs pushed back, calling energy management a strategic layer. If we could instantly top up our Deviations, burst damage might go wild and mess with balance. So for now, no one-click wonder. Instead, they’ll focus on buffing underused Deviations, making the weaker ones viable. I can respect that – I’d rather have more meaningful choices than a button that trivializes combat.

Here’s something I was personally waiting for: custom loading screens. The feature existed before, letting you set images from your album as your personal loading screen. Then it vanished because it was bloating client file sizes and the display experience was wonky. Good news: the optimization is underway, and it’s set to reopen in August. Even better, once you set an image, the next loading screen will show that image first, so you can instantly see how it looks. Get your screenshot folders ready.

And finally, the world change prompt saga. In a previous hotline, the devs said they wouldn’t add an option to disable those annoying “world changed” pop-ups. The feedback storm that followed must have been a sight to behold, because they took another look and found the prompt was sometimes bugging out, appearing multiple times in a short window. So, on July 22(PT), they’ll temporarily disable that prompt to fix the anomaly and polish the trigger rules. After that, the feature returns – quieter and less annoying, I hope. It’s a rare moment where persistent feedback (and maybe a few too many pop-ups) led to a genuine reassessment.

As the Meta Hotline wraps up, I realize how much I appreciate this transparent, sometimes messy dialogue. The team doesn’t always say yes, and sometimes they say “not yet,” but every like and dislike on the Hot Charts moves a needle somewhere. My advice? Keep voting, keep grumbling constructively, and maybe one day that minigame will be a real thing. Until then, I’ll be here dodging abnormal camera shakes and hoarding Stardust Crates with cautious optimism.

See you in the apocalypse.