Update 3.6.0

Written By Oscar Lundberg
 

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

 
Oscar Lundberg
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Update 3.7.0
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