GREETINGS CHAMPIONS!
The October Game Update is now LIVE! This update includes a new mode: Slipgate; a new Champion: Athena; a fresh rotation of weekly Arcade Modes; the Quake 4 Heavy Machinegun Vanity Skin “Annihilator”; Champion & Weapon Balance Changes; and a Game Hardening Pass (performance gains).
BUILD HIGHLIGHTS:
New Mode: SLIPGATE
https://youtu.be/9IN5spGwE1Y
Slipgate is an attack-and-defend mode where both teams fight over the Slipgate portal: a massive wormhole capable of summoning an ancient unnamed horror. Each-and-every sharpshooter spawns with all weapons, full health, full armor but a single, precious, precious life. The defending team of Elder God cultists are trying to open the Slipgate, while the attacking team must stand on the point to close the gate before whatever tentacled terror on the other side pulls itself into our dimension!
LIMITED TIME EVENT: SLIPGATE FESTIVAL
https://youtu.be/8NM3ng8URjw
From October 11th - 31st all players taking part from day one will immediately receive the Elder Guardian Tentacle Weapon Shaders for all starting weapons (Machinegun, Shotgun, & Nailgun)!
Subsequent festival milestones will result in the new Annihilator Heavy Machine Gun Skin being gifted to all participants, then unlocking the Overseer Scalebearer Lore Skin and, ultimately, Athena – or her Coalition Lore Skin if the Champion is already owned either through the Champions Pack, or by purchasing Athena any time before the goal is reached.
Read more about the Slipgate Festival here.
New Champion: ATHENA
https://youtu.be/aLnyZiXc1i0
Athena was among the first to sign up to the GDF and seek vengeance against the Strogg who devastated Earth. Caught in a trap laid for the expeditionary forces, she escaped when a Slipgate generator collapsed, teleporting her drop pod into the Dreamland arenas. Now she uses her grapple line throws and aerial acrobatics to dominate the airspace above her enemies and rain death from above.
Starting Statistics:
- Health 125/100
- Armor 0/50
- Speed 320
Active Ability – Grappling Hook: Athena will launch a grappling hook to the target location and immediately pull herself towards it. While in flight, Athena can stop pulling herself and instead swing, allowing her to perform impressive maneuvers:
- Linear Pull Hook
- Swing Hook
- Piercing Damage 25
- Swing Damage 50
Passive Ability – Ramp Jump: Athena can reach great heights by using the top ramp or step as a launching platform.
Arcade Modes
A brand new way to queue up and play! The Arcade is a weekly rotation of rule modifiers that shake up how you play Quake Champions in fun, different ways. This month we’re introducing four new modes, one for each week of the month (in order of appearance):
UNHOLY TRINITY TDM
Choose any champion, all weapons have been removed from the map, however you spawn with the unholy trinity – Rocket Launcher, Railgun, & Lightning gun & NOW WITH A TEAM FULL OF FRIENDS! Armor and health are still present on the map. Practice your combos!
LEAD THE WAY
Everybody’s Scalebearer in a Free For All Deathmatch where Bull Rush is an insta-kill on your enemies. So, basically, it’s an Insta Scaletrain to ChooChoo town!
SWINGER PARTY
Put your keys in the bowl and… No, not THAT kind of party!!! Everybody’s Athena in a Free for All Deathmatch where a direct Grappling Hook shot on an enemy Athena is an insta-kill. So, basically, it’s a SWINGER’S PARTY.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
SACRIFICE
Remember Sacrifice? Well, it’s that, but now w/ a shorter cap time - down from two-and-a-half minutes to just one minute!
New Weapon Skin: ANNIHILATOR
Used on all galactic fronts, the SMC Annihilator is a space marine's best friend. It punches holes through enemies like they were paper. This Quake 4 Heavy Machine gun fits right into to any player's perfect arsenal.
GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS
In this update we’ve included a number of general improvements:
Game Hardening: The team have taken a forensic look under the game’s hood in order to better deliver solid framerates and eradicate ‘ghost’ inputs as part of our ongoing commitment to improving the game’s performance.
Read the full details of our Game Hardening in our latest Dev Diary here.
Performance Summary
- Improved performance of FX heavy Champions
- Improved client and server-side performance for shotgun
- Improved performance of Gore spawns
- Improved performance of several maps through art/shader optimizations
- and poly count reductions
Quality Of Life Updates
- Added a HUD section to Game Settings
- Added Ally and Enemy Outline Color options in HUD Settings
- Added Current Challenge Info toggle in HUD Settings
- Added Zoom FOV options to Game Settings
- Reintroducing Scoreboard to End of Match – Thanks to your feedback, we brought this back from a lost Slipgate in the depths of the Dreamlands
Champions
- Fixed an issue where Respawning via the pause menu with Slash could cause death camera to shake rapidly
- Fixed an issue with Strogg where player was unable to pick up the soul during Sacrifice after using Peeker
- Fixed an issue with Strogg where the 'Sensor Antenna' Vanity did not cloak properly upon ability use
- Fixed an issue where Ranger's Dire Orb could pass through doors
Maps
- Addressed an issue on Longest Yard to improve Lighting on the pre/post game podium screens
- Fixed various art issues by the Heavy Machinegun spawns on Longest Yard
- Fixed an issue on Longest Yard where players could shoot and damage others through the floor
- Addressed an issue on Tempest Shrine where players could stand out of the playable area by the Ship
- Hourglass pick-ups adjusted to reduce how quickly active abilities can be restored, reducing the number of available hourglasses and/or moving them to positions that favor the player out of control.
- Awoken 5 to 6 (increased, but moved them from areas of power to areas of weakness)
- Blood Covenant 10 to 6
- Blood Run 7 to 6
- Ruins of Sarnath 17 to 10
- Tempest Shrine 15 to 13
- The Molten Falls 9 to 7
Map Changes: Lockbox
- Updated Lockbox item layout
- Swapped the locations of Mega Health and Power-Up
- Removed the Railgun near the floating platform in the Aeon Crystal room (upper toilet bowl)
- Swapped the locations of Lightning Gun and the nearby Light Armor
- Moved the Heavy Armor: In TDM/DM it is now located in the Blind Oculus room (Point B) - In Sacrifice / Slipgate it is in the cavernous staircase near the Blind Oculus
- In the Bridge Room: moved the Light Armor from behind the Acidfall to the center of the lower level
- Added a Teleporter behind the Acidfall that leads to the upper 3rd level of the same room
- Replaced the Super Nailgun on the 3rd floor of the Acidfall Bridge room with a Railgun
- Added two Small Healths near the Rocket Launcher
- In Sacrifice / Slipgate: repositioned the Heavy Machinegun in the closed base (Point A) to align with the nearby jumppad
- Added a new teleporter to Lockbox behind the acid-fall
Weapons
- Fixed an issue which occurred after using abilities which could break the increased damage from zooming in with the HMG
- Fixed an issue where Flame effect could appear on the gauntlet when not playing Death Knight
- Fixed an issue where weapon textures could appear low res
- Fixed an issue where weapon zoom would zoom in several times further than intended
Vanity
- Fixed the historically incorrect US Flag on BJ’s Liberator set
- Fixed a texture error on Sorlag’s Savage set
- Removed a reversed decal from the Pummel Gauntlet
UI
- Fixed an issue where Players could appear in the lobby after disconnecting from a Custom match
- Fixed an issue where the Player profile would appear blank when opened
- Fixed an issue where the Time limit and score limit on the scoreboard were shown incorrectly
- Addressed an issue where Users could not access their player profile
- Fixed certain strings that were not showing up correctly
- Fixed an issue where a box would appear when hovering over the Eradicator Weapon in the Store
- Updated the Battle Report, Match Achievements to show proper amount of digits
- Fixed issues where certain buttons were not easily selectable
Gameplay
- Fixed an issue with Strogg where Players were unable to pick up the Soul after using Peeker, during a Sacrifice match
- Fixed an issue playing Unholy Trinity where Rocket Launcher God medals earned were not added to profile properly
- Fixed an issue in Unholy Trinity where the Rocket Launcher would play the near-empty audio when fired at all times
- Fixed an issue in Team Instagib where Certain Champions did not take self-damage
- Spawn Protection added to all Quick Play and Arcade Modes, for consistent behavior in all unranked play
Tech
- Fixed a crash in spectator mode which could occur if player was in free cam between matches
- Fixed a crash that could occur if players were using voice chat during warmup
- Addressed an issue specific to AMD Vega machines which could crash on launch
- Fixed an issue where the game could crash when spamming the Death
- Knight ability when joining a session in progress
- Addressed various forum reported FPS and Performance drops and hitches during matches
- Addressed various champion gore issues throughout matches on different maps
Spectator
- Fixed an issue where the Spectator would see an empty Respawn button after a player respawned during warmup
Bots
- Made various improvements to bot navigation
- Improved weapon handling & difficulty
Balance Changes
Champion Balance Changes
All Champions
- Adjusted View Heights to account for recent rescaling of player models - essentially this pass is updating all Champion in-game model sizes to reflect their hitbox changes that we have over many patches from Feburary to now
- Unified Crouch Speeds
- Light Champions increased from 80 to 160u
- Medium Champions increased from 77 to 160u
- Heavy Champions increased from 75 to 160u
*Slash’s changes noted below
**Scale = Model Scale + Hitbox
Anarki
- Raised View Height 0.65 to 0.66m
B.J. Blazkowicz
- Lowered View Height 0.58 to 0.56m
Clutch
- Scale 1.175 to 1.15x
- Lowered View Height 0.68 to 0.58m
- Further Reduced Hitbox Size
Death Knight
- Lowered View Height 0.555 to 0.52m
- Flame Strike direct damage 50 to 40
- Flame Strike splash damage 51 to 30
- Flame Strike radius 3 to 2m (120 to 80u)
DOOM Slayer
- Lowered View Height 0.75 to 0.6m
- Hands Raise Time 0.3 to 0.4s
Galena
- Scale 1.1 to 1.2x
- Lowered View Height 0.62 to 0.6m
- Further Increased Hitbox Size
Keel
- Scale 1.15 to 1.22x
- Hitbox size reduced (had too much padding after scaling)
Scalebearer
- Scale 1.15 to 1.175x
- Lowered View Height 0.65 to 0.64m
- Bull Rush Damages Adjusted from 50/75/100/150/200 to 75/100/125/150/200
Slash
- Lowered View Height 0.78 to 0.6m
- Crouch Speed 85% to 50% (272 to 160u)
- Crouch Slide Friction 1.3 to 1.0
Sorlag
- Scale 1.1 to 1.0x
- Lowered View Height 0.7 to 0.58m
- Bunny Hop Acceleration 0.02 to 0.05
Strogg & Peeker
- Lowered View Height 0.58 to 0.56m
WEAPON BALANCE CHANGES:
Lightning Gun
- Cooldown 55 to 52ms (18 to 19 shots per second) resulting in a very slight DPS boost of 1 more hit per second
See you in Slipgate mode, Quakers! Have fun!