Hunters,

Update 1.9 is now Live on Test!

Player movement changes

• Improvements made to local and remote player movement to address Desync issues.

Developer Note:

With this update, we have introduced some improvements to player movement in relation to issues around Desync.

Local improvements – these refer to improvements relating to your Hunter on your client. We have improved the error correction in game which should allow for faster and fairer feedback in those instances where desync can occur. The aim here is to reduce the instances of abrupt and unexpected teleports. However, it is important to note, bad network connectivity, latency or other network interrupts will mean that some instance of teleporting will occur.

Remote improvements – these refer to improvements relating to all other hunters in your match. The improvement now will ensure that the server’s entity position is more accurate. This should adjust for discrepancies and improve overall interaction. This will especially be effective in those instances where hunters cannot be revived or looted because the body has registered in a different position on the client compared with the server.

We know that this has been a big topic in the community for quite some time, and we really hope these changes will have a positive impact. From our internal tests, we have seen improvement, but need your feedback to ensure that these improvements are a step in the right direction.

Ping Limit

• A new maximum ping limit is set for 225ms.
• When selecting a region, you will notice they are divided into distinct colours. Optimal regions for your sessions will be highlighted with a gold background and blue font for the latency. If the font is Orange with a grey background this means that you can connect to this region as it is within the ping limit but may not provide the best experience. If a region is outside the ping limit, this will appear with red text and will be blocked out, meaning you cannot select this region.
• Every player will be able to connect and play on at least one server region. Some will have other options available to them, but the aim is to ensure that no one is completely locked out due to their location or slow ISP.
• When playing with friends, the Host (inviter) will choose the region. If someone in the team has a higher latency to the region than 225ms, the party will get a popup that the game may be disrupted due to the high ping. However, the group will still be able to play.

Developer's Note:

We know that adding a region lock or ping limit has been a contentious topic within the community. Many have been asking for this feature for a long time, while others have said that playing with friends or on more populated servers is more important. This was all feedback we had to keep in mind when creating this feature, and we hope that we have been able to find a middle ground here that will accommodate everyone.

Please keep in mind that the current limit of 225ms is just a base starting point. We will continue to monitor this to change and can adjust the value to be either higher or lower based on the data and feedback we recieve.

Solo players will no longer be able to join regions with high latency and random groups will pair you with players within your region, but if you select a region where your ping is too high, you will be notified to change regions to one with lower latency before queuing for randoms. We look forward to hearing your feedback as this will help us to ensure this system is balanced, but effective.

Team Details Screen Improvements

• We have added some information that is displayed on the Team details screen. This screen will now display actions performed by, and against your partner(s) which will be highlighted with a blue background.
• Consolidated icons and colour displayed for both inbound and outbound actions (‘Downed’ & ‘Killed’):
  • Inbound refers to the actions performed against you by enemy hunters, outbound refers to the action against enemy hunter.
  • Inbound icons are the familiar white skull for a ‘downed’ event, and red skull for ‘killed’.
  • Outbound icons are a variant of the inbound, but with a small bullet hole in the head of the skull (right between the eyes).
  • The names of your teammates are now highlighted in blue on the left side of the team details screen.

• Time stamps have been added to the tooltips for each action for a better understanding when they occurred during a mission.
  • If there are multiple time stamps, the icon is marked with a small yellow symbol on the bottom right corner.

• Added separate icons for a player carrying either one or two Bounty Tokens.
  
• Added a ‘bounty extracted’ icon to differentiate between players who picked up bounty at least once during a mission and those who extracted with a bounty token.

Developer Note:

The improvements made to the team details screen should now provide a better overview of what happened during your last match. This will add some missing context around key events involving your partner(s) as well as timestamps that will provide some extra context around when these interactions occurred.

We hope that these additions will help you to gain a better insight into which in-game events line up with which enemy hunters to allow you to paint a clearer, more accurate breakdown of the interactions of you, your team, and enemy hunters from the last match.

Bounty Hunt match time reduction

• The match timer for Bounty Hunt has been reduced to 45 minutes (previously 60 mins).

Developer's Note:

After an extensive review of the data around the length of matches, we found that only 1% of all matches went beyond the 45-minute mark. Given the fact that such a small number of matches are this long, we felt that a reduction would provide several benefits. This change will bring improvements to the server load as well improve the matchmaking speed. We understand not everyone will be happy with this change but based on the data and our research around this, we feel there are for more benefits than downside. However, we will monitor this change closely over the coming months to see if that is the case.

Performance

Server Performance

• Fixed several dedicated server crashes which should reduce disconnects.
• Improvements made to the connection between the dedicated server and the server gateway.
• Improvements made to the dedicated server tolerance level in instances when backend connection is lost to reduce the number of potential disconnects.

Client performance

• Fixed several potential issues that could cause stutters or sudden FPS drops.
• Improvements made to the light cast from electric lamps to improve performance.
• Various changes made to improve performance.

Audio

Weapon Audio Improvements

• Improved the audio tied to distant interior gunshots for better readability over distance. This should make it easy to determine if a shot was fired indoors or outdoors.

Developer Note:

This is one of the first steps in an ongoing effort to improve the overall readability of audio cues. In most scenarios, gunshots are quite readable, but we noticed some issues in their behaviour over longer distances, especially differentiating between an indoor or an outdoor shot.

This change should make it much easier to tell these apart. You will notice two defining elements to the sounds that will give you the information you need to pinpoint where it came from. If it has a long reverberant tail after the shot has been fired, then this was most likely fired outdoors, while indoor shot will not have this kind of tail to the sound but will have a special interior sound that will play alongside the gunshot sound.

We are hopeful that this will be a bit improvement to the overall readability so make sure to test this out and give us your feedback.

Gameplay

General gameplay changes

• Player Spawn improvement: There is now a minimum distance between spawning players of 110m on DeSalle. This avoids some unfair spawn configurations and allows us to place more spawn points in general. This currently only affect spawns in DeSalle as the earlier maps already have larger distances between the spawns.
• When punching an open door to close it, it will now smash through all the way to the other side 180°. If a player is in the way, they might take up to 50 HP damage.

Gunplay

Weapon Balancing

• Increased the rate of fire of the Winfield 1876 Centennial by around 20%.
• Reload speed has been increased to shorten the reload time of the Winfield 1887 Terminus
• Increased the rate of fire of the Winfield 1887 Terminus by around 5%
• Improvements made to the fire animations of the Centennial and Terminus to support the increased rate of fire.
• Minor adjustments made to the ballistics of the long ammo pistol cartridge to slightly reduce the damage dealt at close range but keeping higher damage at slightly longer distances.

Developer Note:

The Uppercut has always been one of the weapons with the highest pick rate in Hunt, and for good reason. It is a very versatile weapon in most situations and deals high damage at various ranges. However, with this update, we want to move this weapon away from its current dominating position.

The Uppercut will still deal 125 damage up to 20m or so (previously up to 30m), meaning you can still easily down a player that has lost a small health chunk. However, it will now deal more damage at further ranges, increasing the effective range and allowing the ability to deal more damage to other body parts at range.

Our hope is this will allow it to find a specific spot in the Arsenal alongside the existing weapons and any future additions.

• Increased the base damage of the poison ammo to be in line with regular ammo.
• Increased the number of Heavy melee attacks that can be performed with the Heavy Knife before running out of stamina by 1.
• Increased the number of Heavy melee attacks that can be performed with the Saber before running out of stamina by 1.
• Increase the heavy melee damage caused by the Machete:
  • Armoured can now be killed with two strikes bringing it more inline with the Saber.
  • The increased damage also puts more pressure on enemy Hunters to heal faster before bleeding out.

• The Talon heavy melee attack has been reimagined and now acts in the same manner as an attack from a combat axe. However, the number of heavy attacks that can be performed has been reduced from 3 to 2 before running out of stamina.

Developer Note:

Heavy Knife

In general, we were seeing a lower pick rate for the Heavy knife over the regular knife, this of course is not an issue, but we wanted to make sure the Heavy Knife is also seen as an attractive option as a melee tool.

With these changes the two are now closer in terms of heavy attack stamina usage with the Knife still having a slight edge (pun-intended). The important thing that has always distinguished the two options has been the attack animation and hit consistency, this is where we want a lot of the choice between the two to come from, your personal preference when using them.

Machete and Saber

With the changes to the Heavy knives above, we also wanted to make sure that the two small slot melee weapons still stand out as options in comparison to the tools, so we also adjusted them to account for these changes.

Talon Variants

We had also seen a lower pick rates when looking at the Talon variants and wanted to make sure these were an attractive option for players. These changes are a re-imagining of the variant as we saw it was difficult to find their own spots when compared to other melee options. Each swing of the Talon is now much deadlier, for example killing an Armored in one hit, of course this is now offset by only having a maximum of two heavy swings.

• Slugs now differentiate between medium and long barreled shotguns, resulting in slightly stronger damage drop over distance with medium barreled shotguns compared to before.
• Slightly reduced the damage dealt by slugs to lower body and limbs. This requires more precise hits to the upper torso in order to perform a kill in one shot.
• Reduce the extra ammo for Slugs by around 30-40%
  • Romero 77 reduced to 4 (previously 6).
  • Romero 77 Talon reduced to 4 (previously 6).
  • Romero 77 Handcannon reduced to 3 (previously 5).
  • Romero 77 Hatchet reduced to 3 (previously 5).
  • Caldwell Rival 78 reduced to to 5 (previously 8)
  • Caldwell Rival 78 Handcannon reduced to 4 (previously 6).
  • Specter 1882 reduced to 6 (previously 10).
  • Specter 1882 Bayonet reduced to 6 (previously 10).
  • Specter 1882 Compact reduced to 5 (previously 8).
  • Winfield 1893 Slate reduced to 4 (previously 6)
  • Winfield 1887 Terminus reduced to 5 (previously 8)
  • Winfield 1887 Terminus Handcannon reduced to 4 (previously 6)
  • Crown and King Auto-5 reduced to 4 (previously 6)
  • LeMat MK2 reduced to 2 (previously 3).

Developer Note:

We have seen Slugs having a higher pick rate than many other custom ammo types, which of course is expected as they are a powerful choice. However, we wanted to take another pass at them to make sure they fill the position that was originally intended.

Medium barrel shotguns (Caldwell Rival, Winfield 1893 Slate, Winfield 1887 Terminus, Specter Bayonet) will now have increased damage drop-off and decreased OHK (One Hit Kill) range compared to the longer barrels, this helps to separate the shotguns a bit and means that if you want the best chance of slugs being effective the longer barrels will be the choice.

We have also reduced their max ammo capacity to make sure every shot counts. It is important to understand that the extra stopping power also comes with consequences when missing shots.

Hunter

Outlines

• The equipment of teammates (active and holstered) is now also highlighted together with the character when teammate outlines are turned on.
• All interactions that do not require to be held over time can now be activated while cooking a throwable (e.g. starting elevators, gathering ammunition, or taking from a loot box).

Interactions

• All ‘use’ interactions that do not require the action to be held can now be activated while cooking a throwable (e.g. Starting Elevators, gathering ammunition or taking loot).
• Previously players could only interact with doors and window shutters in these situations.

Meta

Black Market

• The Black Market is a new type of shop where the players can purchase Legendary content from several infamous vendors.
• All vendors will have its own theme as well as a specific type of content which players can purchase for the best possible Blood Bonds price in the game.
• Each vendor will have limited stock. Once all items have been purchased, you will no longer be able to interact with the vendor. New offers will be available with future updates
• Each vendor shop will contain an order list of items available for purchase. The order they are unlocked for you will be random, but all items will be visible from the moment the store is available.
  • If you already own one of the Legendary item that is on offer, you will then be able to purchase an instance of this hunter/weapon for a reduced Hunt Dollars price. This will then open the next unlock available from that vendor.
  • Please note, in order to purchase the Hunter instance, you must have a free hunter slot available.

UI

News Indicator Improvements

• We made some improvements and additions to the news indicator: by clicking on any news indicator in the menu tabs, the whole section / sub-section can be marked as read.
• It is also possible to mark everything as ‘read’ by using a new dedicated button in the options menu. In this case all the indicators disappear through the game.

Other UI Improvements

• Improvements made to the weapons and tools on the death screen.
• Weapons and tools in the 3d preview are now better framed and rotate around their center.

World

Global

• Blocked off the non-interactive side of the ladders in Hunting Towers for better readability. Towers).
• Improved the precision of bullet collision when shooting through metal grids, metal barricades, metal cages, etc.
• Improved player collision of Horse Carts for more consistent vaulting from the drawbar onto the top.

Stillwater Bayou

• Darrow Livestock: Removed the cranked gate and replaced it with a wooden sliding door at the entrance to the basement.
• Darrow Livestock: Reworked the Pit area.
• Pitching Crematorium: Added a new staircase entrance (from east approach) to the underground area.
• Pitching Crematorium: Added some higher walls around the main entrance to provide more full body cover for players.
• Stillwater Bend: Reworked the northside underground entrance and its surroundings.
• Port Reeker: Added a new bridge entrance to the middle boss building.
• Port Reeker: Added multiple stairways, connecting the ground level and elevated walkways.
• Alice Farm: Added a new ladder in the silo and a new window entrance to the West barn (spider lair barn). You can now access both roof parts of this barn.

Lawson Delta

• C&A Lumber: It is no longer possible to access the roofs of the main buildings (the small roof in between the main building and the workshop is still accessible). This change will also close an unfair position that allowed players to shoot south out of the workshop area near the sliding gate.
• C&A Lumber: Added a new ladder entrance under the boss building.
• Salter’s Pork: Added a new tunnel entrance on the East side from the open field to the outer East barn.
• Fort Carmick: Reworked a window on the south-east side of the wall for better visuals, leading, and cover.
• Fort Carmick: Improvements made to the player movement around the large cannons.

DeSalle

• Heritage Pork: Added new spawn points and adjusted the areas around them.
• Heritage Pork: Adjustments made to the existing spawn points and the areas around them.
• Weeping Stone Mill: Added a new hole at the bridge on the west side to vault through.
• Kingsnake Mine: Opened the tunnel’s underneath, providing access to the main and side buildings. This includes a ladder and a long elevator to the main building.
• Fort Bolden: Changed the covered bridge into a new Log Bridge across the riverbed to the southwest.
• Fort Bolden: Added barricades at the high ground next to the west and north-west bridges, providing cover to make it more viable to use the bridges.
• Fort Bolden: Reworked the South-West surroundings for more better visuals and more interesting navigation and combat.
• Fort Bolden: Minor improvements to the north-west tunnel entrance for sightlines and cover.

Please note - The bug fixes list is currently not complete. We are still compiling all the fixes and will post a follow up later during the test phase (before it goes to the live servers

AI

• Hive swarms now correctly navigate through the world when homing in on players.
• Fixed a bug that caused the hive footstep audio to continue to play if it was killed mid-stride.
• Fixed a bug that cause the boss bounty to appear in one location but can only be collected in another (example, if the boss falls through the staircase, the token could appear on the steps but can only be collected from below)
• Fixed an issue where Scrapbeak loot could land in an unreachable location.
• Fixed a bug that caused meathead bodies to de-spawn too early.
• Fixed an issue where a grunt could deal damage with an attack after the animation completed.

Hunter

• Fixed a bug where the position of a dead hunter moved slightly while being revived.
• Fixed an issue that caused the concertina bombs throwing animation to be slightly off.
• Fixed an issue that caused Sgt. Bridgewater's glove to clip through the first aid kit when in "hip fire aim."
• Fixed a bug that prevented the prompt to stop bleeding appearing on screen while you are bleeding.
• Fixed a bug that caused the "Hold F to stop burning" prompt to remain on the screen after banishing a boss.

UI

• Fixed a bug that caused an issue with the flash effect on an ultrawide screen.
• Fixed an issue that caused the menu to appear in-game after reconnecting.
• Fixed a rare bug that caused some issues when using custom hotkeys.
• Added some shortcuts on several buttons on controllers.
• Fixed a rare bug that caused the menu tabs to not appear if you had a slow connection to the backend.
• Fixed an issue where the Hunter was visible in the background on the last match screen if a teammate left the group.
• Fixed an issue where Subtabs in the progress screen were missing after clicking the leaderboard button in newsfeed.
• Fixed a bug that resulted in potentially selecting the wrong summons if it was selected from the BH/QP lobby.
• Fixed a bug that resulted in not being able to see the hunter if you looked at the “compare” screen a 2nd or 3rd time.
• Fixed several issues related to the Quickplay leaderboards (incorrect tooltips etc.).
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to change the ‘trios’ option and ready/unready status when the lobby screen was not active.
• Fixed an issue where switching Leaderboard stats via d-pad didn’t update correctly.
• Players can no longer buy bundles while in the matchmaking queue.
• Fixed a few occurrences of overlapping icons in the Arsenal.
• Fixed several bugs that could cause clean guns to appear dirty.
• Fixed an issue that caused red skull kills to not be correctly displayed on the team details screen.
• Fixed a few instances of the ‘locked’ icon and the ‘unlock percentage’ circle overlapping in the Book of Weapons.
• Fixed an issue where the equipment bar would not show the correct custom hotkeys.
• Fixed an issue that resulted in sorting not working as intended when used on the Roster weapons list.
• Fixed an issue that caused the ‘Leave Group’ button to overlap with the chatbox.

Weapons

• Fixed an issue that allowed poison bullets/bolts to detonate a thrown projectile when hit.
• Fixed an issue that stopped choke bolts from not producing a choke cloud when shooting a lit barrel.
• Fixed a bug that caused weapons to clip through the floor after swapping it for another weapon.
• Fixed an issue that caused a small delay to occur with the Bornheim Match when going back into ADS after a taking shot.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Dolch Precision to disappear in the 3D viewer.
• Fixed an issue that resulted in the Romero not dealing the correct damage when hitting a target meters away.

World

Global

• Fixed an issue that caused blueprints to be invisible in the Watch Towers.
• Made improvements for all world items (IE hammers, envelopes, etc) to prevent clipping into surfaces or floating above.
• Fixed an issue that caused Meatheads to de-spawn earlier than intended.
• Fixed an issue that prevented items or weapons from being interactable due to clipping into the ground or surface.
• Fixed an issue that caused the “Earn Bloodline XP” Summon to receive slightly less progress than intended.
• Fixed an envelope spawn that could be hidden inside the Assassin’s lair dressings.
• Fixed some spots where players could hide inside the Assassin’s lair dressings too well.
• Fixed an issue that caused incorrect texturing on vegetation in the Sundown time of day.
• Fixed an issue that caused the lightning strike of the bounty to not be completely vertical.
• Fixed an issue that caused players to teleport or become stuck inside assets after using a ladder.
• Fixed several crash instances when loading into missions.
• Fixed several instances of invisible colliders on all three maps.
• Improvements made to the navigation of the Spider and the Assassin in several boss lairs.

Stillwater Bayou

• Scupper Lake: Fixed a group of floating trees on the southwest side, near Port Reeker.
• Cypress Huts: Fixed a grassy hill not rendering correctly.
• Cypress Huts: Fixed an incorrect audio cue on the wooden roof of the white house east of the boss lair.
• Cypress Huts: Fixed some incorrect textures inside the main building.
• Cypress Huts: Fixed a box incorrectly de-rendering inside the main building.
• Catfish Grove: Fixed an invisible corner caused by some crates.
• Catfish Grove: Fixed some floating geometry.
• Slaughterhouse: Fixed a stuck spot in the boss lair barn.
• Stillwater Bend: Fixed an issue that caused a Meathead to spawn on top of a roof.
• Chapel of Madonna Noire: Fixed a stuck spot in the forest south of the compound.
• Chapel of Madonna Noire: Fixed some visual holes in the ceiling in the basement.
• Chapel of Madonna Noire: Fixed some invisible walls in the entrances to the basement.
• Chapel of Madonna Noire: Fixed some flickering textures in the entrances to the basement.
• Chapel of Madonna Noire: Fixed a small hole between two assets in the crouch entrance to the basement.
• Chapel of Madonna Noire: Fixed an issue with the ambient audio when entering the basement.
• Alice Farm: Fixed an issue that caused the vegetation to not load in properly.
• Alain & Son’s Fish: Improved ground textures around the player spawns.
• Alain & Son’s Fish: Fixed a stuck spot in a group of trees.
• Alain & Son’s Fish: Fixed a stuck spot in a tree south of the main building.
• Healing Waters Church: Fixed a gap inside the church that was only visible from one direction.
• Healing Waters Church: Fixed a spot where a Hunter could hide too well inside some geometry inside the church.
• Healing Waters Church: Fixed some vegetation that was clipping through the outer wall.
• Healing Waters Church: Fixed an incorrect rendering of one of the underground tunnels.
• Healing Waters Church: Fixed a vision issue where it was not possible to see a Hunter at specific angles at the entrances to the underground.
• Pitching Crematorium: Fixed some incorrect textures in the basement walls.
• Reynard Mill & Lumber: Fixed an extract vehicle that was clipping into the ground.
• Reynard Mill & Lumber: Fixed a stuck spot in the sawmill building.
• Reynard Mill & Lumber: Fixed a spot where the tree trunks overlapped with wood stacks.
• Lockbay Docks: Fixed a stuck spot in the basement.
• Lockbay Docks: Fixed a spot where a throwable could incorrectly go through a solid piece of roof.
• Blanchett Graves: Fixed an oil puddle that was not igniting properly when exposed to a flame.
• Davant Ranch: Fixed a floating piece of Scrapbeak lair dressing.
• Davant Ranch: Fixed a spot where a throwable could incorrectly go through a solid piece of roof.