Update 4.0 - Test Server

Version: v0.498
SteambuildID: 3367287
Client patch size: ~3GB

Hunters,

Update 4.0 is now live on the Test servers. We wanted to start testing this update as quickly as possible so you can all try out the latest changes and Quickplay. You will experience some issues such as missing floors or walls (Check the known issues for more information), but do not worry, we will be fixing these problems with upcoming hotfixes!

• Quickplay – With this update, we are introducing our first new game-mode, Quickplay. This is an alternate way to play Hunt designed for solo players only with a chance to earn free Hunters. Close the rifts and absorb the Wellspring’s energy in a race against time and other Hunters. It’s your only chance for salvation.
• Challenges - This update introduces a variety of daily/weekly challenges, complete the challenges and receive in-game rewards. The challenges are available via the Bloodline Screen.
• Gunplay changes - With this update we are introducing our first set of Quality of Life improvements to gunplay, this includes faster and normalized animation timings across the arsenal for weapon cycling, grenade throwing and aiming down sight after selecting a weapon.

Quickplay

• A streamlined, solo-only experience with no boss targets or extraction phase. Instead, damned Hunters race to find and close four Rifts, activate the Wellspring, and absorb its energy. Winner keeps their Hunter; the rest are killed.
• At the beginning of a game, players are given the chance to save their soul by activating the Wellspring - a mysterious source of supernatural energy.
  • Instead of a boss target, players must search for Rifts using Dark Sight.
  • Close 4 Rifts (a similar process to finding Clues in Bounty Hunt mode) to start the absorption of the Wellspring’s energy. Each closed Rift grants the player one random trait.
  • During Quickplay, players have to manually locate supply points. The points only show up on the map for players that have already discovered them.
  • The first Hunter to close four rifts activates the Wellspring. They begin absorbing its valuable energy and become everybody's target.
  • The longer that Hunter stays alive, the more Wellspring energy they absorb.
  • The moment that Hunter is killed, his killer gains control of the Wellspring and starts absorbing its remaining energy instead. This continues until there is only one Hunter left or the Wellspring is depleted. Any Hunter who absorbed energy from the Wellspring will receive that amount worth of Bounty at the end of the mission - even if they died.
  • If the carrier dies from AI or by his own hand, whoever interacts with the corpse first, becomes the new target and continues absorbing Wellspring energy.
  • Whoever is the last to control the Wellspring when it runs dry will survive and save the soul of their Hunter. Everybody else is consumed by fire when the Wellspring implodes.
  • The winner - the Soul Survivor - can keep their Hunter, all scavenged equipment, and traits and can recruit him into his Bloodline.

• Each round, players receive a free (but tragically, damned) Hunter, who they can try to save over the course of the match.
  • The Hunter comes with a random outfit up to the recruitment tier the player has unlocked in his Bloodline.
  • There are five random outfits to choose from, if none is selected one will be picked at random

• Before the match, players can choose one of four early-game equipment presets:
  • A random starting pistol
  • A random shotgun
  • A random melee weapon
  • A fully random weapon from any of the above

Challenges

• The challenges are rated in tiers (1 to 3) linked to the Bloodline Tiers with increasing difficulty.
  • A player at Bloodline Rank 50, who currently is in the middle of Tier2, will only receive Tier 2 challenges.

• The rewards will be drawn randomly from associated reward pools.
  • Rewards are decoupled from the player's personal progression, which can lead to new players getting limited access to mid or even end-game equipment occasionally.
  • Reward pools are split by quality from the lowest (Bronze), to medium (Silver), to the highest (Gold).

• Players can track the progress of their current challenges on the map while playing.
  
• Weekly challenges will run for 7 days, daily ones for 24 hours. If a challenge is not completed when the time runs out, it is replaced and the progress alongside with the potential reward is lost. Challenges will reset at the same point in time globally, which results in the following reset times:
  • Weekly Challenges reset every Monday.
    • UTC - 07:00
    • US West (Los Angeles) - 00:00
    • US East (New York) - 03:00
    • SA East (Sao Paulo) - 04:00
    • EU Central (Frankfurt) - 08:00
    • AP Central (Singapore) - 15:00
    • AP East (Sydney) - 18:00

Gunplay changes

• This iteration of quality of life improvements include:
  • Faster (de-)select animations of all weapons to make the gun cycling process quicker.
    • Grenades will now be swapped faster than sidearms, and sidearms faster than rifles, crossbows and shotguns
    • One-handed melee weapons will now be swapped at the same speed as sidearms, sawn-off weapons at the speed of rifles

  • Shorter preparation animations to allow faster and more standardized throwing times for grenades.
    • For example, previously items like the Hive Bomb took a lot longer to throw than Fuses or Dynamite Sticks.

  • Improvements to allow players to transition from shoulder aim to iron sights much faster after selecting a weapon.
  
  

AI

Hellhounds

• Added the ability to dismember the body of Hellhounds on death (similar to other AI)
• Added Hellhound Mask variants to the game. Now one member of a Hellhound pack can spawn with a metal face plate that absorbs headshot damage.

General

• AI can now be killed silently with headshots or melee attacks to the head, suppressing any revealing death sounds they normally make
• The Butcher and Meathead now take slightly less explosion damage (i.e. Frag Bomb can no longer kill a Meathead, but a Dynamite Stick can)

Audio

• Pass on equipment select/deselects audio to match new timings and expected audible range.
• Fixed issue with occlusion not working properly.

Gunplay

• Melee range improvements:
  • All melee swing attacks now have a constant range throughout their animations (except Fists/Dusters/Brawler)
  • Increased range on all Knife melee attacks
  • Increased range on all Throwing Knife melee attacks
  • Increased range on Rifle Buttstock light melee attacks

• Medium bullets no longer penetrate brick
  
• Quad Derringer exhausted melee attacks now chain more consistently with the animation
  
• When a player starts a mission without a weapon in the first equipment slot, any weapon in the second slot will be automatically selected by default on mission start.
  
• Re-selecting a single-action revolver after having interrupted its shooting so the hammer couldn't be pulled back after the shot will reset the weapon to it's ready state.

Hunters

• Added an in-game prompt at the start of a round to encourage players to press and hold E in order to use Dark Sight to locate clues.

Meta

Economy Changes

• Increased Bloodline start capital from $3000 to $4000.
• Reduced money reward for empty Bloodline ranks from $1000 to $200.
• Reduced money reward for unlocking a new Tier from $5000 to $1000.
• Reduced money reward for endless Bloodline loop from $666 to $200.
• Reduced XP needed for endless Bloodline loop from 8000 to 5000.

Mission

• The map's region rule set for shrinking has been modified to be more randomized in the greyed out sectors. The greyed out sectors may not always be adjacent from each other (This also makes locating the boss's lair to be less predictable in Bounty Hunt)

UI

• Adjusted the after death screen to displays the correct icon for fist kills
• Additional information has been added to Error message 0x30001
• Additional information has been added to the ‘user banned’ error message

World

• Several bugs fixed on Lawson Delta
• Replaced and improved a large amount of level placeholder assets (Lawson Delta)
• Improved landscape to streamline compound approaches (Lawson Delta)
• Improved player leading and cover in some compounds (Lawson Delta)
• First detail dressing pass in some compounds (Lawson Delta)
• Adjusted and repositioned some player spawn-points in Stillwater Bayou to prevent early spawn kills.

• Fixed an issue that caused the butcher to get stuck in the Prison POI sometimes.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent players from stopping bleeding if they still had a throwing knife or crossbow bolt stuck in their hunter model.
• Fixed an issue that made it possible for the butcher to take damage from hellfire bombs, although he's immune to fire.
• Fixed an issue that could lead to wrong placement and behavior of dog- or chicken-cages.
• Fixed an issue that caused dark sight being too dark when used right after or during the vaulting process.
• Fixed an issue that caused weapons in the second slot not being displayed correctly on hunters in case their first weapon slot was empty.
• Fixed some inconsistencies for ammo looting, depending on how many ammo the player had left in the weapon.
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from taking damage if they went inside dog cages.
• Fixed navigation issues in several places on Lawson Delta, that prevented AI from moving properly.
• Fixed several lighting issues on Lawson Delta.
• Fixed a number of places where players could get stuck on Lawson Delta.
• Fixed some collision issues (missing or invisible collisions) on Cemetery and Lawson Delta.
• Adjusted view distances for some vegetation assets.
• Fixed Meathead attack variation selection process.
• Fixed Meathead behavioral glitches when player is not reachable.
• Fixed issues with Meathead sometimes spawning too many leeches.
• Fixed issue where the Meathead would miss melee attacks because it preferred an overhead strike instead of a straight forward stab.
• Fixed Butcher exploits related to players that are in unreachable positions in the arena.
• Fixed a bug where the Butcher could be pulled out of its downed state when taking damage.
• Fixed navigation issue with the Butcher when players were on another floor.
• Various server side fixes for crashes in AI (logic and queries).
• Fixed issues where AI could get stuck behind obstacles, corners and/or closed doors.
• Fixed an issue where AI would not attack players that were hiding 'inside' the corpse of a Meathead.
• Fixed a bug which caused Hellhounds to be able to attack through walls
• Fixed an issue where a Grunt's movement would be interrupted while in the aware state when a target's location was updated.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Grunt, Armoured and Hive to turn slower than intended in some cases
• Fixed an issue where equipping a weapon only in the secondary weapon slot, would cause the Hunter to equip it as default instead of fists in their primary slot
• Fixed an issue which resulted in 1-handed melee weapons not being attached to the hunter correctly when not equipped.
• Fixed an issue which resulted in fists not having an icon in the UI/HUD.
• Fixed an issue which resulted in the 2nd pistol of a two-pistol loadout being attached to the chest instead of the hip holster.
• Fixed an issue which caused deaths by impact damage from consumables and tools to show as melee instead of ranged attack kills.
• Fixed an issue which resulted in the camera moving down when a hunter got off the top of a ladder.
• Fixed an issue with the first aid kit not always replenishing health even if the progress bar was full.
• Fixed a bug where the boss icons did not turn transparent, if all tokens had been extracted.
• Fixed an issue where certain in-game banners, like "XZY has picked up the bounty!" were not shown in some cases
• Fixed a bug that caused the wrong summary screen to display in cases where a Hunter died during a mission if the player was prestige 1 - 50 and any Rank below 15
• Fixed LOD issues on the Nagant buttstock (affects Precision, Deadeye and Officer Carbine variants)
• Disabled all Depth of Field effects on default weapon poses to fix issues with DoF getting stuck after using ladders
• Aiming with a melee weapon will no longer stop sprinting
• Flares are now destroyed properly by explosions
• Reverted a change to Vetterli dry shot chaining to fix an issue preventing ADS
• Corrected issues in tooltips for Doctor Trait and First Aid Kit.

• Fixed some smaller UI issues.
• Fixed some animation issues.
• Fixed some minor Art issues on Cemetery and Lawson Delta.

• Solo players sometimes might not load into the mission, but get a message that there was a matchmaking problem.
• Some in game geometry may appear invisible or pop in-and-out of view
• Spectating other players is currently not working.
• Looting a small weapon in exchange for a large weapon from a downed player will result in broken weapons after that player gets revived.
• The cursor may get stuck in previous client window dimensions after changing the resolution.
• Closing doors right next to AI causes them to get stuck.
• Some assets might appear as low res / low poly , even on high settings.
• Kills on grunts, armoreds and hives achieved through indirect damage, do not count towards challenge progress.
• Uncompleted challenges are displayed as 'Challenge Completed' in-game if they expire while in a mission.
• Completed challenges do not appear as "completed" on the map screen.
• Switching back to a previously fired single action revolver causes cocking animation to play twice.
• Hunter coat sometimes clips through Hunter's front after revival.
• The "Bad Luck" accolades will not count towards the total XP earned in the summary screen.
• Quickplay : A hunter that didn't get killed by another player will still draw bounty from wellspring until the bounty has been manually picked up by another player.
• Quickplay missions sometimes also appear as solo mission on the Bounty Hunt mode contract screen.
• Quickplay: The values shown on the leaderboard and drained counter are sometimes not in sync.

Other known issues:

• Clients can sometimes crash or freeze during gameplay.
• The blue outline around team-mates is hard to see in certain light conditions.
• Server might occasionally crash.
• Some lines are not localized in all languages (showing as @____ or have english text) .
• Some animations might not play properly.
• Updating to latest nVidia drivers might cause stability and/or performance problems.