Update 3.6.0

2024.07.24

LET THE GAMES BEGIN! 

We hope you’re warmed up and ready, Contestants, because the next stop on the World Tour is the VOLPE Championship, and it’s offering some contracts with exclusive sports gear rewards! We’re also running brand new Twitch Drops throughout this World Tour stop, so make sure you tune in for some THE FINALS on Twitch.Tv!

The sponsors are also in full swing fighting over exposure in this week’s store update; check it out below:

Summer is in full swing and vacation times are in full effect, but this week still has some rather substantial changes and bug fixes. In the VOLPE Championship, we’re upping the amount of money you earn per elimination in Cashout, and granting your team part of the vault value immediately when initiating a cashout! We’re also completely removing cash penalties from team wipes - make sure to try these changes out and let us know what you think.

On the bug-fixing side, we have a second fix coming in for the infinite loading screen issue and the issue that prevented contestants from using their specializations, weapons, and gadgets at certain times. For our controller friends, we’ve also fixed the aim assist issue introduced in 3.4 for controller players on PC.

Full list of changes and fixes below:

Balance Changes

Gadgets 

Goo Grenade 

• Increased the time it takes for fire to destroy goo from 6s to 12s

Game Modes

Cashout

• Increased cash awarded for kills from $200 to $500

• ~30% of the cash in a Cashbox is now awarded to the team that deposits the Cashbox the moment it is added to the Cashout Station. The remaining ~70% of the cash in a Cashbox is awarded when the cashout is completed at the Cashout Station. These values are rounded off to give easier-to-understand values. This replaces the previous $2000 a team would receive for initiating a cashout.

• Removed all cash loss penalties for team wipes

• Updated the Vault spawning logic at the start of a match for more even distribution

• Added new notification messages to the HUD for when cash is awarded to a team

• Increased the time taken to steal a cashout from 6s to 7s
  

  Dev Note: We’ve felt for some time that Cashout generates more ‘third party’ fights than intended, as well as long-lasting team-versus-team encounters, and that happens in part because of the incentives of the scoring system. We are testing the changes above to see if they address these issues and improve the overall experience.  These changes have been selected as the ruleset for the VOLPE Championships. We’ll monitor how they perform via telemetry and your feedback and will adjust them as needed.   

Ranked Terminal Attack

• Destruction is now reset at half-time without needing to reload the level
  Dev note: This should give a smoother experience and reduce downtime
  

Terminal Attack & Ranked Terminal Attack

• Added health regeneration thresholds per archetype to Terminal Attack, meaning players will now regenerate health up to a specific threshold based on if they are a Light, Medium or Heavy, rather than the current fixed 100HP. New thresholds are:

• Light = 100HP

• Medium = 125HP

• Heavy = 150HP

  Dev Note: We feel this change will help level the playing field, as well as reduce the effectiveness of ‘poke’ damage with weapons like the SR-84. We also feel this change better represents the variety in the archetypes.  
  

Specializations

Evasive Dash

• Increased the cooldown duration from 5.5s to 6.5s per charge

Goo Gun

• Increased the time it takes for fire to destroy goo from 6s to 12s

Grapple Hook

• Decreased the cooldown duration from 10s to 8s

Healing Beam

• Decreased the time taken until the Healing Beam can overheat from 7s to 5.5s

Dev Note: Overheating is something Healing Beam users rarely have to manage, so we’ve lowered the time to overheat which means players need to be slightly more controlled in their use of it.

Weapons 

93R

• Slightly decreased bullet dispersion when firing from the hip in all stances, making the weapon more accurate

• Decreased the amount of horizontal recoil when firing the 93R, making it easier to control and more precise

• Slightly tightened the cluster of bullets fired in a burst, making the weapon more precise

Content and Bug Fixes 

Contracts

• Updated the text on some contracts to say they are earned for ‘rounds,’ not ‘matches,’ to make them clearer

• Added some additional Contract types

Gadgets 

General

• Fixed an issue where some Gadgets could become ‘locked’ and unable to fire/use

Goo Grenade

• Fixed an issue where goo could stick to the side of the warm-up zone in Terminal Attack modes

Game Modes

Private Matches

• Added ‘Pause match’ functionality to private matches. Anybody in a spectator slot can pause the match using the R button

World Tour

• Fixed an issue where the ‘elimination’ outro screen at the end of a tournament would not show up correctly

Ranked Terminal Attack

• Adjusted how Ranked Score (RS) updates are calculated for parties.

  Dev Note: This should lead to more intuitive RS changes for parties with smaller RS differences between members. Parties with higher RS differences between members will see more appropriate updates based on their own RS. The result should mean that RS changes will be better based on the match result, i.e. larger RS gained when beating stronger teams, and less RS gained when beating weaker teams.

Specializations 

General

• Fixed an issue where some Specializations could become ‘locked’ and unable to fire/use

Goo Gun

• Fixed an issue where goo could stick to the side of the warm-up zone in Terminal Attack modes

UI 

Game Summary Screen

• Brought back the “deaths” statistic to the summary

• Brought back the mixed-caps style font

Front-end menus

• Fixed several issues that could result in ‘out of memory’ crashes

• Fixed an issue where having text chat open could block some button inputs

HUD

• Fixed an issue where the colorblind settings would not update in the Terminal Attack score widget

Ping System

• Changed default ping intent on Cashout Stations owned by enemy teams to "attack"

• Jump pads now generate an event log message when pinged

• Fixed an event log message that had incorrect player name data

• Updated event log message text from “Going to vault X” to “Move to vault X,” to bring it in line with other instructional pings 

• Added a new HUD icon when pinging player statues

Weapons

General

• Fixed an issue where some Weapons could become ‘locked’ and unable to fire/use
  
  

Update 3.4.0

2024.07.10

ISEUL-T CUP, Pond Dweller & The Pro Circuit!

Update 3.4 is coming in hot with multiple features and changes fighting over the spotlight! ISEUL-T is entering The Arena as the latest sponsor on the next stop of the World Tour - The ISEUL-T Cup! The Pro Circuit also goes live with this update, however, both of these changes are sharing that spotlight with a certain green someone in our latest store update…

Introducing the Pond Dweller:

Also, we have quite the list of changes this time including several changes to Bank-It, shorter wait-times in Terminal Attack, the addition of party chat while in the main menu and the ability to equip multiple weapon animations to the same gun.

Those of you with a keen eye will also notice that we’ve added an info panel that explains the World Tour’s FINALS event - check it out in-game.

Finally, both Polish and Turkish translations of THE FINALS are now live with this update, so make sure to throw a “Cześć” or “Merhaba” into team chat at the start of a game!

Full list of changes included in this update:

Balance Changes

Gadgets 

Breach Charge

• Decreased minimum damage applied at outer edge of explosions to 0

• Increased damage radius from 2m to 2.5m

• Set damage fall-off to scale linearly from the max damage radius to the outer radius

Dev Note: Previously, our area of effect (AoE) Weapons and Gadgets had several ‘damage shelves’, where damage would fall off radically at the edge of the inner radius of a blast and at the edge of the outer radius. This could result in AoE damage feeling somewhat inconsistent. These changes now cause damage to fall-off linearly from the inner radius damage value, down to 0 at the outer edge of the radius, which we believe will feel much more consistent. The radius of each AoE weapon has been increased slightly as a result of this, as the outer edge of explosions now does much less damage than it did previously.  

C4

• Decreased minimum damage applied at outer edge of explosions to 0

• Increased damage radius from 6m to 6.5m

• Set damage fall-off to scale linearly from the max damage radius to the outer radius  

Explosive Mine

• Decreased minimum damage applied at outer edge of explosions to 0

• Increased damage radius from 3.5m to 4.25m

• Set damage fall-off to scale linearly from the max damage radius to the outer radius 

Frag Grenade

• Decreased minimum damage applied at outer edge of explosions to 0

• Increased damage radius from 4.5m to 5m

• Set damage fall-off to scale linearly from the max damage radius to the outer radius 

Game Modes

Dev Note: These changes are the first part of a series of improvements we’re planning to make to each of our game modes over the course of Season 3, including our Cashout and Power Shift modes. These changes will cover a range of areas, from pacing to scoring. The goal is to smooth out some of the rough edges in each of our modes, hopefully leading to a better overall experience across all our modes.  

Bank It

• Removed team wipes

• Decreased respawn time from 17 seconds to 10 seconds

• Added the ability for players to change to a different Contestant while dead

Terminal Attack & Ranked Terminal Attack

• Decreased lobby duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds

• Decreased warm-up duration from 25 seconds to 20 seconds

• Decreased round duration from 150 seconds to 130 seconds

Weapons 

CL-40

• Decreased minimum damage applied at outer edge of explosions to 0

• Increased damage radius from 2.6m to 3m

• Set damage fall-off to scale linearly from the max damage radius to the outer radius

Dev Note: As with the AoE Gadgets, our AoE weapons have also been updated to get more consistent feeling damage fall-off.  

MGL-32

• Decreased minimum damage applied at outer edge of explosions to 0

• Increased damage radius from 3.75m to 4m

• Set damage fall-off to scale linearly from the max damage radius to the outer radius

RPG-7

• Decreased minimum damage applied at outer edge of explosions to 0

• Increased damage radius from 4.5m to 5.5m

• Set damage fall-off to scale linearly from the max damage radius to the outer radius  

Content and Bug Fixes

Animation 

• Fixed a bad transition animation between the Winch Claw and using the ability to lift items

• Fixed an issue where players could not play emote animations consecutive times

• Added support for enabling multiple custom weapon animations at once. If multiple animations are equipped, an animation will be randomly selected from that list when triggered

Characters 

• Fixed a bug that caused ‘General Goodboy’ pet to be rendered with blurry artifacts

• Fixed various smaller issues with cosmetic items, such as various clipping issues

Gadgets 

Thermal Bore

• Fixed an issue where the Thermal Bore could become stuck in mid-air

Game Modes

Bank It

• Fixed an issue where it would sometimes not be possible to respawn

Practice Range

• Added Season 2 trophies for Ranked, Terminal Attack event & season

Ranked Terminal Attack

• Fixed an issue where the full rank score gain could sometimes not be given to players due to the losing team abandoning the match 

Localization

• Added support for Turkish and Polish languages 

Maps

Kyoto

• Made various fixes to improve the quality of building destruction

• Fixed various issues were there were gaps in the map

Matchmaking

• Fixed an issue where the matchmaking region could be wrongly set for new players on consoles

Stability

• Fixed several issues that could cause client crashes

• Fixed one issue where players could sometimes spawn into a game and be unable to attack or use Gadgets

• Fixed one of the issues which would cause a player to be unable to fire their weapon or use their abilities

UI 

HUD

• Fixed an issue where respawn markers could fly off to unintended locations

Ping System

• Increased max ping distance to 300m

Text Chat

• Added support for text chat in the front-end menus when in a party

• Improved profanity filter to include more languages

• Fixed an issue where chat from blocked players could sometimes still be visible

• Removed some status messages from text chat to make it less spammy

World Tour 

• Added info panel for the World Tour ‘THE FINALS’ event

Weapons

General

• Fixed a bug that could cause players to experience different recoil decay rates when using some semi-automatic guns 

Spear

• Reduced the impulse applied by the secondary attack, to prevent some objects being pushed a long way by the attack
  

Update 3.1.0

2024.06.19

Let’s get Dressed to Deploy in The Arena with our first store rotation and update of Season 3! We’re heading full sprint into summer and there’s a green theme in the store - from the Jaded, But Not Jaded set to the Midsummer Maypole! 

The Midsummer Maypole is free to claim for the coming week, so make sure to do so!

Here is the new store update:

We’re also bringing some balance changes and stability increases.

Let’s get into the notes!

Balance Changes

Gadgets

Sonar Grenades

• Decreased range from 15m to 12m

Weapons

LH1

• Decreased damage from 52 to 48

Throwing Knives

• Decreased damage from 63 to 60

Winch Claw

• Decreased damage from 15 to 5

Content and Bug Fixes

Bug Fixes

Fixed a server crash related to certain types of destruction

Game modes

Unranked Terminal Attack

• The mode now randomly selects the starting player and objective spawn scenario, proceeding through the sequence of scenarios from that point

  Dev note: Terminal Attack previously had the same set sequence of scenarios as Ranked Terminal Attack, but due to it featuring less rounds, you would less often get to see the later combinations of team and objective spawns. By giving it a random starting point in the sequence, you can now experience and practice all of them more regularly.