It's time for another Fine Tuning Update! No Mercs or Maps with this one, instead we're giving you a plethora of balance changes and fixes, including one major addition we know you've been waiting for...
New Anti-Cheat System
Over the past several months, we have been working to implement a new anti-cheat system. NGS has been designed to allow us to more easily and efficiently protect Dirty Bomb from cheating and abusive programs.
While we are confident that NGS will be an effective tool against cheaters in the long-term, we'd like to urge patience in the short-term. There is no silver-bullet solution for this problem, and while this is an important step forward, there may be some issues as we work to improve NGS and fix any issues that might arise. As always, we look forward to your feedback in the official forums about this major change to Dirty Bomb.
Balance Changes
We've been keeping an eye on your feedback, as well as the wealth of data that our servers have recorded, and as a result we are making a number of balance changes with this month's Fine Tuning Update. While there are a few tweaks to our Mercs, the biggest changes have come to the weapons, many of them receiving improved handling and reduced recoil to boost their combat potential, while a few adjustments have been made to other weapons that were performing far above the pack.
As with all balance changes, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on these changes once you’ve tried them out in-game.
Nader
- Increased health to 120hp (from 110hp)
- Reduced movement speed by ~2.5%
Rhino
- Increased movement speed by ~2.5%
Skyhammer
- Airstrike Markers will now always deal damage when they first detonate
- Increased cooldown when failing to call in an Airstrike to 20s (from 15s)
- Reduced Airstrike Marker detonation radius by ~10%
Sparks
- Increased Med Pack healing amount to 30hp (from 25hp)
- Increased the battery charge of the REVIVR so it takes ~10% longer to drain
M4A1 Assault Rifle
- Reduced effective range by ~5%
BR-16 AR
- Reduced bullet spread by ~5%
- Reduced recoil kick by ~5%
Stark AR
- Reduced bullet spread by ~5%
- Reduced recoil kick by ~5%
Timik-47 AR
- Reduced bullet spread by ~5%
- Reduced recoil kick by ~5%
Dreiss AR
- Reduced recoil kick by ~10%
K-121 MG
- Increased magazine size to 55 (from 50)
- Reduced spread increase rate by ~10%
Hollunds 880
- Increased effective range by ~25%
Remburg 7
- Reduced pellet spread by ~8%
Ahnuhld-12 Shotgun
- Increased effective range by ~50%
SMG-9
- Reduced bullet spread by ~5%
- Reduced recoil kick by ~5%
Hochfir SMG
- Reduced recoil kick by ~10%
Crotzni SMG
- Increased starting bullet spread by ~10%
- This is due to the Crotzni being slightly more powerful than other SMG's.
All Melee Weapons
- Removed the turn speed limit from Primary Attacks (ie slashes) for all melee weapons
Kukri Knife
- Extended the Kukri's melee collision box to improve its range
Other Changes
General
- Updated the way Player Skill is calculated in non-competitive games to improve team balance
- Reduced CPU load on dedicated servers by ~20% which should result in smoother games
User Interface
- Team Shuffle by Skill votes now only require 51% of players to vote Yes to pass
- Players can once again double-click to select Loadout Cards on the Trade-Up screen
- News section on front-end now cycles between three most recent posts
- Restored colon in lobby chat messages
- Added error message when failing to join a Party
- Fixed maps not being selected automatically in Quick Join
- Fixed popups disappearing too quickly to be clicked on
Animation
- Improved the first-person throwing animations for packs
- Improved the jump and landing first-person camera movement
Audio
- Continued audio-mixing pass to improve gameplay feedback
- Fixed issue where killing shot of Sniper Rifles could not be heard by the victim
- Added audio for picking-up, dropping and delivering the Carryable Objective
- Added subtle audio confirmation for Kill and Finish notifications
- Fine tuned third-person audio for weapon firing
- Updated Main Menu audio
- Added EV firing sound to Bridge
- Improved Merc audio for incoming damage
- Polish pass for all Merc dialogue
General Gameplay
- Added an upper XP limit of 99,999XP per match to help protect against potential farming exploits
- Updated 4-second Spawn Point invulnerability - If a player fires, they are dropped to a 50% damage shield rather than losing it entirely
- This change does not impact medic revives
- Reduced amount of view kick when shot by ~10%
- Increased view kick recovery speed by ~35%
Arty
- Moved Artillery Targeter further from the camera when held in first-person
Fletcher
- Moved Sticky-Bomb Detonator further from the camera when held in first-person
Kira
- Fixed the Orbital Laser audio not updating with distance
Phantom
- Fixed some bugs relating to activating Refractive Armor
Redeye
- Fixed bug where IR Goggles could occasionally not be enabled
- Fixed bug where some items could continue to glow white after IR Goggles have been disabled
- Fixed bug where Smoke Grenade could block delivery of Carryable Objectives
Sparks
- Improved third-person audio reverb and reflections for REVIVR shots
M4A1 Assault Rifle
- Reload audio now more closely matches the animation
K-121 MG
- Added audio for raising and lowering weapon
Ahnuhld-12 Shotgun
- Improved the fire and lever-action animations
SMG-9
- Updated first-person positioning to make it more consistent with other weapons
Cricket Bat
- Moved the Cricket Bat further from the camera when held in first-person
Notable Bug Fixes
- Fixed Steady Augment not adding health to all deployables
- Fixed several Carryable Objective pick-up and delivery behaviour issues
- Fixed bug where players could be stuck constantly reloading Shotguns
- Fix for objectives not resetting correctly in Stopwatch
-- Team Dirty Bomb --