Our open testing branch already contained a large number of fixes and changes, but we’ve now added even more! We’ve also written a bit about our ongoing efforts to reduce spawn killing.
Some key changes include:
- Spawnkilling has been greatly reduced via tweaked spawn rules and some mapping changes. More info below.
- Fixed the bug where ladders were often not detected by making ladder collisions not affect movement. This fixes some ladder that were not walkable.
- Allowed more trade-kill time for melee hits which should make close combat more reliable.
- Fixed a case of third person machine gun animations not playing correctly which resulted in weapons being held wrong.
- Fixed various first person weapon animation bugs/stutters.
- Fixed overlapping messages when many messages are sent.
- Fixed wall and ceiling exploits in Douaumont, improved map boundaries on Champagne.
- Fixed case where you could get stuck in ADS.
You can find the full changelog on the discussion boards, including links to cases on our our UserEcho support forum where appropriate. If you happen to see an issue which hasn’t been resolved, dropping a note on the UserEcho case will allow us to look into it again. It’s also helpful to let us know if issues have been fixed.
Spawning Changes
To investigate the reports on spawn killing we have created heatmaps so we could research all possible cases. Through these heatmaps we have found that around 20% of the spawn killing happens because spawns are simply too exposed. This requires map changes which we will work on over the course of the coming updates. We have already adjusted Aisne and Argonne. The other 80% cases of spawn killing happened in trenches because the distances there often exceeded the spawn safety distance of 15m. To fix this we had to adjust the spawning rules.
An example of the heatmap in action.
For selecting spawns, we now require enemies to be at least 25+ meters away if they are in the same sector, otherwise they need to be 15+ meters away. It used to be 10+ for squad spawn and 15+ for other spawns.
Spawn point selection also takes into account the distance to enemies and squad mates with more weight given there compared to distance to the objective. So it’s possible you may spawn a bit further from the current objective, but also further from enemies and closer to allies.
We also increased the spawn protection time vs spawn killing by grenades and artillery from 2 to 4 seconds, since it was found that 2 seconds was not enough. Artillery salvos can last quite a while! We are pretty positive these changes will significantly reduce spawn killing and we look forward to your feedback!
Be aware that this change doesn't instantly apply when you are playing on the open testing version - the host of the match needs to be on the open testing version to have the new spawning behavior since the host dictates the spawning behavior.
How do I join the open testing branch?
It’s a very simple process which is part of Steam itself, so it’s also easy to switch back to the regular version of the game. Here’s a guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=572388553