It's been approximately 71 days since our open beta in August. We've made significant changes to ASCENDANT that we believe you will enjoy. Please take a look at what to expect during our week long Steam Next Fest Beta.
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Events
- The likelihood that multiple ‘map wide events’ are active at the same time has been increased.
- For those unfamiliar with this term: ‘map wide events’ is how we refer to events that are automatically active and automatically affect the wider map in some way. For example, lightning strikes, locked main corridor entrances, central surveillance drones, etc.
- A new event has been added: Fire Sale.
- For a brief period during the match, everything in all shops around the map will be completely free.
- You will be made aware of if Fire Sale will be on at some point during the match in the event overview at the start.
- There will be a 1-minute warning before Fire Sale turns on, and it stays active for 3 minutes.
- Another map wide event has been added: Forest Power Plants.
- When active, there will be special plants dotted around the trees and cave walls in the wilderness. You can destroy them by shooting at them. When destroyed, they drop power and some potential other goodies.
- The plants come in a few different rarities, fairly distributed between spawning locations. The rarer plants (obviously) drop better things.
- A new match modifier (not quite an event in its own right) has been added: event overload. When active, loads more events than usual will be on in the match.
- The Boss Summoner event has had an uplift and been moved slightly. Chances are you never even saw it before, which was part of the problem.
- It can appear in two locations in the wilderness: in the caves to the waste, on top of one of the buildings between the forest and swamp to the east.
- It’s now dressed up as a small camp with a console and a scanner drone. It still costs 200 power to activate. After activating it, the drone will lead the way to where the boss will appear.
- The Upgrade Uplinks have received a face lift and now give out more information as to what they’re doing.
- They are still large satellite dish looking things on top of a couple of buildings in the shade, but now larger than before.
- If the event is not active, the device isn’t present at all.
- When under your team’s control, the display will also tell you which team upgrade it is funneling power into.
- It wouldn’t be an update without some changes to the Gorlizard Control event:
- When the gorlizard is possessed, a loud roar can be heard, to let you know what’s coming.
- The Roar ability sound has also been made louder.
- When the gorlizard uses any of its abilities (Roar, Leap, or Heal), it will also leave a temporary marker on the map, to give you a rough idea of where it might be.
- The Deathbringer has received a few clarity updates:
- When shot, a small health gauge will appear next to your crosshair (similar to that of the player controlled gorlizard) to give you a clearer idea of how much health it has.
- While disabled, it will now show a ‘repairing’ icon to more clearly indicate that it has been disabled (in case the smoke and fire is obscured by other smoke and fire).
- The uplift to the Weapon Replicator event that was mentioned in the last patch notes should now be in for real.
- It should now be much clearer when the event is active, when it is printing weapons, and when it has weapons ready and waiting.
- The screens on the Extraction Uplinks (big pylons in the wilderness) have been remade to be easier to read.
Match Rules
- Whether you won or lost a match is now called out immediately when a match ends, instead of having to wait for the celebration screen to find out.
Weapons & Consumables
- How Weapon Unlocks work has undergone some changes.
- Like before, on certain level milestones, you will be given the option to unlock a new weapon. This means that you will get access to all vendors associated with said weapon and can access it in the Weapon Customizer.
- Now, in addition to the above, each new weapon will give you more modules to go along with it, along with a weapon specific perk.
- Additionally, to save you some hassle, a new custom gun using your new modules will be automatically added to your list of custom weapons of that type and, if there is space, also added to your loadout.
- Any players who have already unlocked weapons have been retroactively awarded the modules and perk.
- The damage reducing effect from the Berzerk Boost plant now lasts 20 seconds (up from 10).
- Different beam gloves and energy bombers you can buy or find in a match should now have some different appearances to make them easier to tell apart.
- More weapon modules have received bespoke appearances.
- Battle rifle audio has had some minor tweaks.
- The hyper cannon now reloads automatically on default reload settings (you no longer need to manually initiate it).
- Hit marks should now appear when you shoot shield repair domes, healing domes, and lightning rods.
Movement
- You can now immediately climb after using a wind vortex or pulse bomb into a wall.
- The amount of time you get slowed by after getting shot has been slightly increased. You are now slowed by 20% for 0.5 seconds, and it then dissipates over the 0.5 seconds after that. This effect still can’t occur more often than every 2 seconds.
Abilities & Perks
- The cooldown of the Thundercall: Sequence ability has been reduced to 45 seconds (down from 60).
- The cooldown of the Thundercall: Rapid ability has been reduced to 20 seconds (down from 25) and its activation time has been reduced to 0.5 seconds (down from 1).
- The Bunker Dome: Defence ability now has a 50-second cooldown (down from 90) but the duration has also been reduced to 35 seconds (down from 60). The cost has also been reduced to 1,000 Upgrade Credits.
- A new variant of the Bunker Dome ability has been added: Bunker Dome: Assault.
- Like its sibling, it also projects a protective dome around you when activated. This dome lasts for 25 seconds but all allies inside of the dome (including yourself) also deal 20% more damage.
- It can be unlocked from Marley.
- The Cheat Death perk now has a 20-second cooldown.
- The Ammo Specialist perk now also allows the user to carry 50 extra energy ammo.
- The Resilience perk now also reduces damage you receive by 50% while downed and holding a Biocore.
- The Toxic Transfusion perk has been nerfed a bit, and the heal now has a 1.5 second cooldown (up from 1 second).
- The bonus damage from the Cluster Splitter perk has been increased to 40% (from 20%).
Vehicles
- The three-seater vehicle (the one with a machine gun up top) has been given a new look.
- You can now be awarded with different vehicle skins that you can apply to your quad.
Environment
- A lot of new plants have been added to the wilderness.
- Some less obvious plant swaps have also taken place in order to improve performance.
- The ladder going from the cave into the exec quarter no longer has a hatch door, making it quicker and easier to get up and down.
- A lot of lighting around the map has been updated.
Lobby
- Halloween has arrived in the lobby! Not that anyone can remember what it is, but it feels right.
- A number of vendors have received more chat options.
- Some can provide you with useful gameplay tips, or you can chat to them for some more lore insight or just to get to know them better.
- More will come in future updates.
- The pub in the lobby has been renamed to The Side Quest. Gone with the Saucy Snail is also the strangely chested cattermaw. You will be missed (or, more likely, not).
- The gun sounds from the firing ranges should be a bit quieter.
Customization
- New players can now choose between different premade appearances instead of being given one at random.
- A new beard style has been added. Hell yeah.
- Some new eye colors have been added.
- Face wear should now get hidden while you are applying face customizations.
- More different kinds of underwear have been added.
- You can now be rewarded with charms that can be equipped to your weapons.
- You can now be rewarded with weapon skins that can be used to override the appearance of certain weapons.This only applies to weapons that can’t be built with modules (e.g. pistols and hyper weapons).
UI
- The accolade and results screens at the end of a match have been redesigned slightly.
- The result screen should now make it clearer where your XP and Credit rewards are coming from.
- The chat window will now stay open for longer after a new message has been sent or received.
- The ‘select your free flag decals’ interface now has a search field.
- You can now toggle off the health and shield bar numbers in the settings menu.
- Player stats that are given as ‘time spent’ should now display minutes and seconds instead of just seconds.
- Various icons for customization items and consumables have been replaced with updated versions.
- Various UI effects and dressing components have been given a face lift.
Other Updates
- More improvements to performance.
- The resurrection point ping now lasts longer.
- Player outlines have been reworked to be clearer at distance and make it easier to distinguish if a highlighted player is behind or in front of obstacles.
- All projectile tracers have been completely reworked to be a bit clearer and also more performant.
- Fire can now damage doors.
- Some previously silent interactions now have sound effects. Notably, this includes a sound effect for stealing Biocores from a base. So you should now be able to hear if an enemy player is trying to sneak it away.
- Made some changes to how ‘shaders are being compiled’ is messaged to be a bit less jarring.
- Reworked how fire looks on players and creatures when they are on fire. It should now look less like intermittent explosions.
- More achievements have been added.
- More achievements have been given cosmetic rewards. If you have already completed such an achievement, you will automatically be given the reward.
- Your current state in game will now be shown in your Steam friends list.
- Updated various healing effects that were yellow to instead be green.
- Leaderboard support has been added. For the time being, they are only used by the Top Dog event, but will be expanded to include more leaderboards with a future update.
- You can now block voice chat in the lobby without also having to block team chat. Lobby voice chat block defaults to ON, so you’ll need to unblock it under Audio Options.
- Rare dyes should now be a bit more likely to get from rare mystery bags.
- You can now link your Twitch account to the game, in order to participate in Twitch drop events.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where a bad connection could lead to bullets not being allowed to register hits in close range combat.
- The Factory Printer event buttons should no longer claim to be ‘ready’ when the event is offline.
- They should also be easier to interact with when the event is active.
- Various collision fixes around the map, making collisions smoother and easier to traverse.
- Some of these fixes will also have removed instances where you would end up briefly teleporting up and down at the end of a climb (e.g. on the cylindrical shape on top of the thermal transfer building).
- Fixed an issue where you couldn’t uncrouch if you were holding a Biocore and crouched inside a forward camp.
- More fixes to IK interactions with various surfaces to stop players and NPCs clipping through them onto whatever was beneath.
- Your arms should no longer be floating while wielding beam gloves in an ultra wide resolution.
- The hyper cannon icon has been updated to match its new appearance.
- Fixed some issues where the earthtree drop pods would reinitialise some effects if you disconnected and reconnected.
- The Long-Range Reinforcer and Headhunter perks should be working as intended again.
- The Shield Upgrader perk can now upgrade tier 3 shields to tier 4 again.
- The Metal Melter perk’s bonus damage to vehicles should now be working properly.
- Recharger modules should once again be able to generate ammo even while not equipped.
- Made some fixes to various hairstyles to make them fit different head shapes a bit better.
- Burrower pings should have their voice callouts back.
- The pick-ups for the Hyper Cannon, Hyper Rifle, Flamethrower, Surge Beam, and X3 Incendiary pistol are no longer just red.
- Level up effects should no longer be getting stuck in the lobby.
- The Gorlizard Control event now uses the correct icon.
- The Shop Uplink should no longer give out power twice each cycle.
- Banner parts that come from achievements should now tell you which achievements they come from, if you haven’t unlocked them yet.
- Fixed an issue where the scope shader wouldn’t go away properly if you Alt-tabbed out of the game while in scope mode.
- The ‘wall of fame’ display in the bar should now display all names correctly.
- You should no longer be able to make it into the water treatment room through the large pipe if the area is not available in a match.
- The ‘contesting’ overlay should now go away if you contest a Biocore as a gorlizard and then get killed and sent back to your regular, old human body.
- Fixed various overlapping elements in the HUD.
- Fixed an issue where cattermaw could get stuck in weird places.
- Tracker modules should no longer highlight teammates.
- Training dummies can now contest Biocores in the deathbringer.
- Revives will now get interrupted if you get knocked away mid-revive.
- Fixed a few dialogue typos.
- The spotlight banners around the lobby should now be better at displaying players who come back from a match with impressive stats.
- Fixed an issue where, occasionally, the ‘blur’ effect applied to the seeker in ‘hide and seek’ wouldn’t go away when the game started.
- The Discount team upgrade should no longer require you to have the full cost power amount before spending the discounted amount.
- Fixed an issue where the firing VFX could sometimes get stuck to an automatic weapon.
- Traps can now be triggered by training dummies.
- Fixed some doors that couldn’t be closed (they would just automatically reopen half way through the closing sequence, due to thinking something was in the way).
- EMP grenades (and the EMP event) should now work properly with doors that are in the process of opening or closing.
- Training dummies should now be appearing on the toxic gas and blast door maps.
- When you buy a custom weapon during a match, only that weapon will be claimed to be ‘purchased’ on the little screens in the shop. Previously, if you had multiple custom weapons, they would all think they had been purchased.
- When healing yourself, you should no longer see hit indicators as if you hit an enemy.