On June 6th, our team is releasing the next update for Company of Heroes 3, Brass Leopard (1.1.5), which focuses on quality-of-life improvements, gameplay changes, bug fixes and more. We showed a sneak preview of this mid-sized update in one of our last developer livestreams. You can check it out here. This will be a high-level overview of everything coming in Brass Leopard, with more detailed patch notes releasing tomorrow.
Find all the details below, or you can watch this quick summary:
OVERVIEW
Brass Leopard will include:
- A new 3vs3 map in Co-op Automatch, Skirmish and Custom Games
- Changes to Gameplay
- Quality of Life improvements
- Audio improvements
- Mod Tool improvements
- Bug Fixes
NEW CONTENT
Brass Leopard will include the new 3vs3 map Catania Crossing, which is very reminiscent of The Scheldt from the original Company of Heroes.
- This map will be available in Co-Op Automatch, singleplayer Skirmish, or via Custom Games.
- This map will not be coming to Player vs Player Automatch.
Catania Crossing, though more Co-Op focused, was a map we worked on earlier in development and was already near completion. Since it was now ready, we decided to make it available to players to offer more variety as soon as possible. It was designed as a cooperative map for more social experiences, and not necessarily for the highest levels of competitive play. As such, we felt it best to leave it out of PvP automatch.
We know our PvP fans are eager to see more maps in the automatch pool, and we’re happy to say that the next update will bring two new maps to all modes. One is a 3vs3 and the other is a 4vs4. We hope to have more news on those soon.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
All plane and loiter abilities have been overhauled, thanks in no small part to DevM (Miguel M). There are too many changes to cover here, but in summary, planes should look, feel and respond better, while maintaining the immersion we want players to experience in-game. Be sure to review the upcoming Brass Leopard patch notes for all the granular details.
Here’s a preview:
- Plane timings have been standardized
- Animations are more realistic
- Crashes and debris have more impact
- Terrain deformation from bombs & bombing runs is better
- Projectiles are faster and more accurate
- Paradrops are now invincible
- Units acquired with a Mark Target ability now have an indicator
- Loiters now display a ground indicator for their area-of-effect
QUALITY-OF-LIFE IMPROVEMENTS
We’ve introduced several quality-of-life improvements based on our Development Priorities map and the feedback we’ve been seeing from players.
Event Cues
Event cues have been updated to be more player-friendly and less intrusive with their on-screen real estate. They have also had their priority adjusted so that less important cues won’t override more critical ones. Additionally, event cue boxes will now allow players to click and select units behind them.
Player Names, UI & Team Colors
Units will now display the player name of their owner in the unit card. As in past CoH games, you can now bind a hotkey to toggle player names displayed under unit decorators. Player names under unit decorators can now be toggled on or off for the first time in the series – you can find this in the Settings menu.
We’ve also done a lot of work to unify how team colors and unique player colors work throughout the game. These will now apply to player names and unit health bars on the unit card. Territory flag and capture UI will now use team colors over unique colors to reduce confusion.
Players will no longer be able to instantly tell which Battlegroup other players have selected by checking the Player List. This will now display all the Battlegroups in each player’s loadout.
Camera Zoom
Based on player feedback, we’ve made some adjustments to the camera height while in a match. When you begin, the camera height will still default to its current position, however using the mouse scroll wheel, you can now zoom out an additional 5 meters. We feel this is a happy medium to give players some added flexibility while still ensuring the game feels like Company of Heroes.
Stability
Our team has done some work to help remove frustration that arises when a player desyncs from a match. Desyncs will now only disconnect the player that caused it, instead of ending the game for everyone in the same match. This should help with match and game stability across the board and alleviate griefing from players that purposefully force desyncs.
AUDIO
Several audio fixes and changes have gone into Brass Leopard. Many weapon and vehicle effects have been corrected or improved, such as the US Forces M1919 Browning, Sherman tank, and the Axis Flak36. The team continues to work to improve on the audio mix overall. We’ve also updated several intel announcements to ensure players are receiving the information they need during the most critical parts of a game.
MODDING TOOLS
This update will also include a small number of fixes to the modding tools to help reduce some pain points for our modders. Most notably, we are also introducing “ability achetypes” which are templates that can be cloned to easily create variations using custom properties. In plain English, this is a state tree workaround. We will include more details in the patch notes, but we hope these changes will empower our modders to create more complex and fun mods for players to check out in the near future.
BUG FIXES
One of our primary goals right now is to improve the overall quality of the CoH3 experience for all our players. That means we aim to bring as many bug fixes as possible in each update, and Brass Leopard is no exception. We have several fixes coming for maps, gameplay, art, audio and more to help bolster the game. Additionally, both the Dynamic Italian Campaign and the North African Operation will be getting several bug fixes for our singleplayer fans. You can find the line-by-line details and all the other bug fixes in our patch notes tomorrow.
CONCLUSION
We can’t wait to see and hear your feedback once you go hands-on with Brass Leopard! Be sure to jump into our official forums or Discord to discuss the update with other players and to leave us your thoughts. As always, your feedback helps inform our focus and helps guide the future of Company of Heroes 3. Don't forget that we've outlined our road ahead here. Our Community team will be hosting a live Q&A session on Brass Leopard on June 15th on Twitch, so be sure to tune in!