Our latest 1.2.0 update, Emerald Bear, will be coming to Company of Heroes 3 on PC on Tuesday, July 25th. This update will include two new maps, several system improvements, new player profiles, bug fixes, and changes to multiplayer balance. This summary of the update won’t cover everything coming in Emerald Bear, so be sure to review the full patch notes releasing tomorrow.
For now, you can find all the details below on the changes coming in Emerald Bear, or you can check out this quick recap.
As we laid out in our Road Ahead post, our team is hard at work on additional improvements and content for Company of Heroes 3, and we hope to have more news on those long-term plans in the near future. We originally planned on releasing a Roadmap in July, but we are taking additional time to readjust and make sure our roadmap reflects priorities that will improve the player experience and that our team is confident to deliver on.
Our team has had to realign a few priorities, and that will mean some changes we wanted to introduce to the Italian Dynamic Campaign and to the friends list / party invitations needed to move out of this update. We have introduced some fixes that we think will improve those experiences, however, we hope to include more substantial changes in a future update.
New Content
Emerald Bear will see the introduction of two new maps for all game modes, including PvP Quick Match, Co-op vs A.I., Skirmish, and Custom games.
First up, we have Benghazi, suitable for 3vs3 battles. This port city features deadly urban combat through narrow streets and industrial complexes. Benghazi represented a critical location along the North African coastline. Broad ports and defensible positions made it an inevitable battlefield in Rommel's campaign. Ultimately it changed hands five times in the course of the war.
Benghazi
Next, we have Monte Cavo, suitable for 4vs4 battles. This map features a nighttime raid on a mountaintop military facility, surrounded by dense forest and rocky escarpments. This was the final mountain that stood between the Allied forces and Rome. Nearly twice the height of Monte Cassino, the foothills and summit of this landscape proved vital for securing communications and visibility in Western Italy.
Monte Cavo
Features & Improvements
Player Profile
Player Profiles are the new hub for all the information about your rank, statistics and matches. You can find all the details and some additional previews of this feature here.
Pathfinding
Our team has begun overhauling pathfinding to ensure units move and react in a more immersive way. We have several changes coming in this update to address that; however, this work is ongoing, and we’ll have additional improvements down the road. In this update you’ll see changes to how vehicles turn, end their movement, move in formation, deal with blocked paths and more. You can see some examples of these improvements here, here and here.
Team Weapons
Team weapons have been updated to make them more responsive and self-sufficient. They can now acquire new targets while reloading or on cooldown, can track enemies and setup from an idle state more efficiently, and will teardown much faster. They will also now more accurately respond to reface orders instead of packing up and moving.
Off-Map Abilities
Off-map abilities have been reworked for multiplayer so that they are more robust, reliable and responsive. They will also provide more information, or tells, both visually and through audio. Projectile speed, acceleration, angle, height and offset have all been tweaked to accomplish this. They’ll now use different flare colors to indicate the danger level of an ability, and we’ve also added ground deformation to really shake up the battlefield. You can find the full list of changes in the patch notes. Some examples of off-map changes can be seen here and here.
Tooltips
Many of our in-game tooltips have been updated to provide greater clarity and to alleviate any confusion when learning the game.
Challenges
Several Challenges have been adjusted to make them easier to complete and to more closely align with how players would typically engage in a Company of Heroes 3 match.
Game Balance
Vehicle Mobility
All vehicles have had their speed, rotation rate, acceleration and deceleration adjusted. This work should improve vehicle responsiveness and also create a better distinction between types of vehicles and their classes.
Tank Destroyers
Casemate tank destroyers will now be better at tracking and destroying targets. Their guns will now traverse and track targets, meaning there should be less points of frustration where your tank destroyers continually try to reposition themselves letting your enemy get away.
Projectiles
Direct-fire projectiles such as tank guns, anti-tank guns, autocannons, and flamethrowers have all been reviewed to increase their effectiveness. This change will increase their reliability and prevent them from firing through certain blockers. This also means projectiles will no longer impact low obstacles like mines.
Factions & Units
Each faction has received moderate balance adjustments to tone down some oppressive strategies and to improve other aspects of the factions that were either under picked or underperforming. We’ll leave the specifics for tomorrow’s patch notes! As a preview, we’ve toned down the US Forces Easy Eights, while improving their Elite Infantry. The Wehrmacht are seeing some changes to minimize their dominance right now, while also improving a few underused units. The British Forces will be getting some general improvements as the changes we made to the Training Center impacted them more than we anticipated. And finally, the Deutsches Afrikakorps will be getting some adjustments to address their key weaknesses in the early game to encourage different styles of play.
Bug Fixes
As with every update, we have several bug fixes coming to all areas of the game. Those include:
- Performance
- Audio
- Art & Animation
- General Gameplay
- Singleplayer – Italian Dynamic Campaign and North African Operation
- User Interface & User Experience (UI/UX)
Some notable bug fixes include:
- The end-of-match statistics screen is now more accurate and will improve players’ understanding of what happened during the match.
- Players can now save during the Gela tutorial, that gives players the option to take additional time to complete the tutorial without being reset.
- Fixes to prevent certain ability cancellation exploits.
- The A.I. will no longer be able to ignore the boundary lines of the map to move units outside of the playable space.
You can review the rest of the bug fixes tomorrow in the full patch notes!
Get ready for Emerald Bear releasing tomorrow on PC! We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback and seeing you dig in to all the changes coming in this update. Be sure to jump into our official forums or Discord to discuss the update with other players and to leave us your thoughts. To tide you over in the meantime, be sure to check out our Emerald Bear deep dives with the Design team!