The Test Server is now unlocked! General Manager, Anthony Castoro filled in some extra details on upcoming features in a Reddit post here.
Combat Practice
We’re rolling out the new Combat Practice zone! It’s going to be your destination to get your hands on all the weapons in the game so you practice your skills with other players. We think it'll be a great place to sharpen your skills or just to warm up before you get serious in for an evening (or morning) of Battle Royale. It’s a much smaller map than Z2, designed to highlight each of the locals from our current map so you can practice fighting in the hills, neighborhoods and city areas. When you die, just respawn right back in. There won’t be any parachuting in Combat Practice so it keeps the momentum high.
You enter combat practice with a semi-random selection weapons (pistol, rifle, shotty/smg) and some equipment (backpack, helmet, medkits, etc) already on your person. There is no parachute, you spawn directly onto the map in an area determined by the population in the zone. You can then keep looting up or seek out other players to fight. If you die, you’ll have the option to respawn, at which point you’ll go back to the start of this statement.
Combat Tuning
We’ve made some additional adjustments to the weapons based on feedback from you, the players.
- AR Recoil Reset reduction- Increased the speed that the AR recoil resets to give the user more responsive 2 taps.
- AK 47 Reduced Fire Rate - We decreased the fire rate of the AK to help alleviate closer quarters spammability.
- Shotgun Fixed Pattern - Shotgun now features a fixed, non-rotating pattern. We've added a center pellet. Damage has been increased, but damage fall off has also been increased to make it a more reliable close range weapon.
- Bullet Drop - We've slightly decreased the bullet drop across pistols and rifles to be more in line with the old bullet drop, prior to the combat update.
Match Pacing
We’re making some pretty interesting changes to the gas pacing early in the game to speed up in initial looting lull. We’re taking out the toxicity system and re-tuning the gas damage to compensate. The gas in the early game will now be easier to see through but much more difficult to see through late game to prevent camping.
Other Items
- Improved lighting and color vibrancy
- Pre-Season 7 will be coming with the next major game update and during the season we may introduce a "Beta" score that reflects consistency as well as your top 10. More on that soon.
- Fall damage - We’ve also made some changes to the fall damage system to make it more consistent. You will take the same damage from the same heights regardless of forward velocity. You will also no longer take 1-2 damage randomly when running and jumping over small objects.
- Explosive Arrows are now super effective against vehicles.
- It is now possible to loot while reloading.
- The fifth passenger in a vehicle can now reload and shoot.
- We’ve made improvements to our file system that significantly reduces the download size of the game. This change will require that previous files are downloaded again to receive the new format. However, future downloads will utilize the new format and therefore require a smaller footprint.