Ablockalypse Mode
A new experimental mode named “Ablockalypse” has been added and will be available from 16:00 BST on Friday the 29th of May to 10:00 BST on Monday the 2nd of June. Ablockalypse mode is crazy, fast, and great for new players or a short manic blast of fun for more experienced players. It’s not meant to be balanced, it’s just meant to be crazy.
Compared to the current other game modes:
- Damage to other Heroes is increased by 25%.
- Damage to world and player placed blocks is increased by 100%.
- Build speed has been increased by 100% (decreasing the time taken to build Blocks).
- Costs of most blocks are reduced to half their normal values, with the exception of Crates, Sandbags, and Bricks which are free.
- The time to Recall to your main spawn point has been reduced to 5 seconds.
- Hero Switching is enabled regardless of player level.
- Cost of switching Heroes has been removed.
- Heroes' active ability cool-down times are reduced by 50%.
- The build phase length is set to 240 seconds (4 minutes).
Let us know what you think about Ablockalypse here
Sweet Science
The king of the ring has arrived. Sweet Science is punch drunk, knockout happy, and he means business. Dish out pounding blows with his fists, dash attack or pull enemy heroes towards him, set up gravity traps, disable enemy devices and heal yourself – when the bell rings Sweet Science will be coming at ya!
For a full run down of Sweet Science check out our thread about him here
Gameplay
- Collision between Heroes has been improved to make them more polite and thus less likely to push each other to the sides (and more likely to stop when they collide).
- The mechanism for controlling the fire rate of weapons has been changed to make rates of fire more consistent. This affected a number of weapon’s fire rates; the affected weapons have had to be re-balanced because of this.
- Blocks which are dropped on to Lava are now destroyed.
- Respawn times for Classic and Ranked matches have been updated. These are now 15 seconds at the start of the match. These then increase to 30 seconds from 15 minutes after the end of the build phase, 45 seconds from 30 minutes after the end of the build phase, and 60 seconds from 45 minutes after the end of build phase.
Heroes
Astarella
- P.P.P. attack time has been increased to 0.15 seconds to compensate for the fix to fire rate calculations.
- Orbital Strike Beacon special block now has escalating costs. The cost to build increases by 2000 Bricks for Orbital Strike Beacon you have placed which is still active.
- Orbital Strike Beacon special block has been increased from 27 to 30 per tick.
Sergeant ‘Sarge’ Stone
- M60 OMG attack time has been increased to 0.15 seconds to compensate for the fix to fire rate calculations.
‘Doc’ Eliza Doolally
- Globe Gun primary and alternate fire attack times have been increased to 0.66 seconds to compensate for the fix to fire rate calculations.
- Chem Grenade gas clouds now last for 5 seconds instead of 10 seconds.
- Miasma Mine special block gas clouds now last for 5 seconds instead of 10.
- Miasma Mine special block gas cloud damage has been increased from 15 per second to 20 per second.
Cogwheel
- Rotary Cannon primary and alternate fire attack times have been increased to 0.2 seconds to compensate for the fix to fire rate calculations.
- The textures for the tool and weapons on Cogwheel’s Dwarven Warsuit skin have been improved to better match his body.
Anthony ‘Tony’ Turretto
- Tony’s Caulk Gun no longer applies the Tiki Head visual effect when a player runs through it. The “Slow” status effect is still applied.
- Rivet Gun damage has been reduced from 1.5 to 1.25 per pellet to compensate for the fix to fire rate calculations.
- Lil’ Buddy turret special block have had their health increased from 100 to 120.
O.P. ‘Juan’ Shinobi
- The bomb produced when using the “Vanish” active ability can now be hit and damaged.
- The smoke produced by the Katana alternate attack is now visible to the enemy team again.
Blocks and Devices
- Glue Block no longer applies the Tiki Head visual effect when a player runs through it. The “Slow” status effect is still applied.
Performance
- Fire Trap debris has been optimised so that it has a reduced effect on game performance.
Menus
- Ablockalypse mode has been added to the list of options in the “Play” section.
- The Custom games option has been moved to the right in the “Play” section to accommodate the new Ablockalypse mode.
- The text describing the different game modes has been updated.
- Friendly mode has been re-named to “Classic”.
- The match history information displayed after searching for another player in the “Profile” section should now be correct.
- The icon to indicate you backfilled in to a game when looking at match history in the “Profile” section has had a hover-tip added.
- Players in the Graveyard will no longer be able to access Custom games.
Tutorial
- The Practise Grounds tutorial have been completely re-designed to show off how to perform different game-play mechanics and to provide clearer instructions and ending.
Spectator
- When using the Spectator mode to watch a Custom game the color of names in the kill feed should now correctly indicate which team they are on.
Audio
- When hit by multiple sources of the “Slow” status effect the audio for these will no longer stack on top of each other.
- Additional sound effects have been added to the buttons when inviting players to squads.
- Buttons in the “Play” menu now only play one sound effect at a time.
- The sound effects played when moving through water now respond to whether you are sprinting or walking.
- Additional sound effects have been added to Astarella and O.P.’s idle animations.
- Sound effects have been added when clicking on and releasing the sliders in the settings menus.
- Hero voice commands and death voice over lines should no longer play at the same time as the fanfare screen at the end of a Match.
Options
- V-Sync is now switched off by default on all Master Graphics settings.
Arenas
- The Last Bastion and Fun Factory have been added to Classic and Custom modes.
- Shuko Style and Beach Base have been added to Ranked mode.
- Insandity, High and Low, and Pillard have been added to Ablockalypse mode.
- A lava plane has been added to Mount Olympus, Olympia, Block Keep, Shuko Style, Pipe Mania, Causeway, Blockageddon, and A Cut Above. This makes it clearer that falling off of the side of these arenas will kill your Hero.
- The no-build zones at the default spawn points have been improved in Beach Base, Pipe Mania, and Mount Olympia.
- Block Keep has had the position of the floating platforms tweaked slightly to improve their accessibility.