Update 4.6.0

Nov 6

2024.11.06

Mid-way through Season 4

It’s halftime in The Arena and we bid our second sponsor, HOLTOW, farewell and Thank You for the generous sponsorship this season! ISEUL-T are next in line and have some big shoes to fill following last week’s Trick or Treat event in the World Tour - but if anyone can do it, and in a grandiose fashion, it’s ISEUL-T.

Don't forget to keep spinning the wheel! Ticket drops end on the 13th but the event will stay live until the 15th, giving you time to spend your tickets and pick up a few last items in peace. Good luck!

This week we are bringing you some balance changes, reducing the effective range of both the Healing Beam and the Sword, while adjusting the Pike-556 to have a clearer ranged identity. There’s also a boatload of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements coming your way, with everything from a fix for beards clipping through headwear to some much-needed performance improvements for XBOX.

Worried about what to do when the sun goes dark? Thanks to this week’s store update, and HOLTOW’s generous Insurance Set - you don’t need to worry.

Check it out here:

Now, let’s dig into the changes!

Balance Changes

Healing Beam

Decreased max target distance from 12m to 10m
Decreased max healing distance from 15m to 13m
Decreased time before we disconnect a blocked healing beam, from 1s to 0.75s

Dev Note: We felt the existing range of the Healing Beam was causing teams to benefit from healing in combat, without the associated risks of close proximity. We feel with this closer range we open up more opportunities to counter-play teams that are healing in combat, via various Gadgets. Wherever we can, we prefer to try and solve possible balance issues via counter-play, rather than straight-up nerfs, and we think this change should offer opportunities here, but as always we’ll monitor the impact of the change and adjust as needed.

Pike-556

Decreased damage from 52 to 47
Increased damage falloff multiplier at max range from 75% to 85%, increasing the damage at longer ranges

Dev Note: We felt the Pike-556 still remained too strong in close-range encounters despite the previous damage adjustments. With these changes we make the weapon less effective at closer ranges while maintaining its effectiveness at longer ranges

Pyro Grenade

Pyro Grenades will now deal damage to shields, such as the Dome Shield and Mesh Shield

Sword

Decreased lunge duration of the secondary attack from 0.4 to 0.3 seconds, resulting in ~1m reduction in distance, from roughly 7m to 6m
Decreased the length of the secondary attack’s hit sweep by 55cm

Dev Note: These changes should decrease the effective range of the lunge attack by ~1.5m, hopefully making the Sword slightly less oppressive for players facing it.

Content and Bug Fixes

Animation

Updated player card pose for the ‘Tripwire Tango’ Emote
Fixed an issue where the Winch Claw animation would not play when firing the main weapon
Fixed an issue with the Throwing Knives where the player’s arms could end up in a locked state after using the secondary attack
Made adjustments to how the sprint animations are triggered for the .50 Akimbo pistols. Previously when continuously pressing the assigned sprint button, animations would retrigger making the experience feel a bit clumsy. This should now feel smoother
Fixed an issue where you could enter a faulty movement state when detaching from a broken ladder in the practice range

Audio

Fixed an issue that could cause the commentators to mention it was the first team wipe when the second team wipe of a match happened
Fixed an issue where the Treat Hunt introduction video had the wrong audio file and incorrect subtitles
Added more line variations when new vaults spawn, 1 minute left and 30 seconds left
Improved delivery on June’s respawn lines

Contracts

Players can no longer progress healing-based Contracts by restoring teammates’ health that was lost due to self-damage. Only healing damage caused by enemy players will count
Players can now only progress revive-based Contracts by reviving teammates that were eliminated by opposing players. Reviving players who eliminated themselves will not be counted
Fixed an issue where kills caused by throwables were not granting combat score

Customization

Fixed an issue where beards would clip through some helmets
Made the Tacticool charm heavier, to prevent erratic movement
Added a leaderboard to the ÖRF backpack in-game (visible on the backpack!)
Fixed an issue where sometimes the wrong watch was displayed
Fixed an issue that caused many headwear items to not be displayed on characters at a distance
Fixed an issue where certain headwear would not fully dissolve when a contestant was eliminated
Fixed an issue that caused emote sound effects to be played when editing player cards
Improved the experience of equipping player card items in store bundles
Fixed an issue that caused some weapon skins to load incorrectly, glitch in the game, or not load at all on Xbox

Game Modes

Fixed multiple issues with outline colors on contestants
Fixed an issue where the "being revived" prompt could get stuck on screen
Fixed an issue where thrown Cash Boxes didn't get deposited if you died before they hit the Cashout Station
Improved the movement behaviors of the flying saucers in the Alien Invasion gameshow event

Maps

Kyoto

Improved collision on stepping stone paths to smooth out traversal over the available water crossings
Reduced and consolidated the amount of exposed objectives in the Villa Compound garden to make combat more directional and less chaotic
Small tweaks to the interior layouts of the Guest House, Training Quarters, and Residential zones with the aim of improving readability and reducing complexity

Practice Range

Re-introduced the suspended barrel bags

Seoul

Fixed an issue where several walkways in the Data Center were floating
Fixed an issue where some ladders on the billboards were floating
Fixed an issue where several railings in Seoul had more health than intended

General

Fixed an issue where cobwebs on some maps could block interactions

Performance & Stability

Added Temporal Super-Resolution (TSR) as a new Resolution Scaling Method in the Video Settings
Fixed an issue where large-scale destruction could lead to late-joining/reconnecting players having desynced debris on the map
Fixed an issue that would cause severe performance degradation on Xbox Series S

Added an option to allow players to reset or turn off tutorial hints in the settings menu, resetting hints will return players to the main menu
New look for the matchmaking widget
Fixed an issue where the end-of-round progression screen for Sponsors would appear faulty for players who have reached the maximum Sponsor rank
Fixed an issue where the ‘Blinded Opponent’ score message wouldn’t disappear until the enemy was eliminated
Fixed an issue where environmental kills could result in a large negative score on Contracts (this issue only affected the UI, not the actual Contract progress)

Weapons

Riot Shield