Agents,
As we previously discussed in our end of year state of the game post and more recently in our weekly posts, Operation Overhaul is coming.
For those unaware, Operation Overhaul is a MASSIVE initiative for the team to take the time to rework core aspects of the game and expand its system to make it a more interesting, polished, and accessible experience.
This update is our first major step in this initiative, packed to the brim with new gameplay elements, systemic reworks and map updates. We are very excited to finally show you what we’ve been working on. This is, by far, the biggest patch we’ve worked on yet so we should probably start diving into it right away.
General
Gameflow Change: Vault Printers
Ever since the launch of the game, a major piece of feedback that we have received was that the vault area was under-used in all maps since most matches blaze
through the infiltration phase at great speed. To help remedy this, we are introducing a whole new part of the gameflow: Vault printers!
From now on, the golden doors of the objective room can no longer be opened with 10 intel. You now need a golden keycard to gain access. To get this keycard, you now have to find one of the keycard printers hidden around in the vault area and use 10 intel to start a print.
Once the print is started, the feedback on the printer will change, alerting nearby spies that a print has been started. After 30 seconds your keycard is ready to go and you can head out to the objective room to start the extraction phase.
We think this new addition leads to a lot of fun situations where tension rises as you hide close to your printer, making sure that no spy will steal your prize. Let us know what you think of this major change of pace as you get more playtime in this new reality.
First Aid Vials and Dispenser
First aid vials make their debut, giving players more options to heal on the go and recover from a tough fight. We hope the vials offer more interesting decision making and open up more ways to play the game without being too dependent on self-healing options in field upgrades and character kits.
You can carry up to 3 first-aid vials on yourself at a time.
- They heal for 20 HP each.
- Using a single vial takes 3 seconds.
- Any form of damage, running or trying to shoot will interrupt the action.
- You can find first aid vials in maps or buy them directly for 3 intel each in staff rooms.
Any expertise that puts you in a state will prevent you from using them (Chavez Invincibility, Larcin’s vanishing).
Combat Overhaul
Major rework to many aspects that, together, will make the combat experience smoother and give us a more solid base to continue iterating on the game. This is a very wide reaching initiative that includes these elements:
Reworked animations visual effects
We went back and looked at every weapon in the game to make sure weapon mods have more unique animations that fit their behavior better and that visual effects are easy to read and understand to better drive character personality through their weapons.
The biggest gameplay element is that this allows us to make bespoke animations that fit their fire rate and reload speed much better, removing the sluggish “slowed down” feeling of some weapons.
Duke Animations Before
Updated Duke Animations
Smoother recoil and damage falloff
Recoil curves have been entirely re-made and the overall recoil of weapons across the board has been lowered significantly to make the action more accessible.
To complement this change and make sure that fast firing weapons with perfect tracking do not dominate at all times, we have also introduced much more pronounced damage falloff across the entire arsenal, making sure that time to kill at longer range is longer and giving more chances to respond to attacks.
Directional Hit Indicators
New look for the directional hit indicator that better showcases the directionality of hits and give a precise feedback on the amount of damage received from the direction.
Before
After (Small Damage)
After (Bigger Damage)
Out of cover spy collision
Out of cover spies will now collide together instead of clipping into each other. This makes melee attacks much more reliable and fights less confusing overall.
Aim-Punch tone down
A major piece of feedback we have been tracking is the amount of “aim punch” when receiving damage in a fight, effectively throwing off your aim when you receive damage. We have made two major changes with this update:
- Aim-Punch has been reduced across the board to lower values. The curve for the camera movement has also been smoothed out.
- Frontal damage will cause half as much camera movement as damage from other directions. The intent is that if you see your enemy, you need less camera feedback to understand that you are taking damage. This should reduce a lot of frustrating situations in normal fights.
Expanded Ping System
Two new functions have been added to the ping:
- A contextual ping that will show a specific icon depending on what you are highlighting (ammo, intel, keycards etc.)
- A radial menu with multiple new ping type options by holding down the ping button.
In addition, there is now a 3D element to the ping that appears in the world to help you understand the exact location that was pinged.
Updated Guards Behavior
Guards will now scale their response depending on the heat level of the spy. Here’s how heat penalties work now and how it affects guard behavior.
No heat: Guards will aggro from less far away and will only try to take you down with melee attacks. This level is meant to interfere very little with PVP fights and allow well behaving players to not get much PVE hostility. Guards can still shoot at you if you purposefully put yourself in a situation where they can’t melee you (jumping on a desk to wait around for example).
Heat Level 1: 25% additional damage taken and guards will start shooting at you. This is close to what guards currently do on live from a behavior standpoint.
Heat Level 2: 50% increased damage taken. Guards will aggro from farther away and you will be able to aggro up to 3 guards at once instead of 2.
Heat Level 3: 75% (down from 100% previously) increased damage taken. Guard response is identical to heat level 2 with the added downside of taking even more damage from their shots because of the additional vulnerable status.
To complement this guards have received tweaks to their melee behavior to make them far less likely to punch you from behind as well as a slight buff to their weapon damage to make heat level 1 more dangerous from a PVE perspective.
Additionally, after a short grace period, aggro-ed guard will start building up your heat level over time, incentivizing players to cut line of sight and get back into cover. This means that standing in front of heat level 0 guards while juking them for a long time will eventually lead to heat level 1 popping up.
Heat Gained Buffer
Finally, the buffer to gain no heat after hitting a spy has been made longer and we also added a buffer on passive heat gained from aggro to not trigger if you gained heat actively from hitting a npc very recently. This prevents the player from gaining double the heat from a single attack on a guard. The idea is that heat should not act as an accuracy check during a fight, we should be more lenient if a lost shot hits a npc while fighting other players.
The intent behind all this is to reduce chaos in the average fight by making guards respond to something that scales with player action. If a spy plays in a very clean manner, they can expect guards to be less of a threat than before, players that gather a lot of heat will find the response much more daunting than before.
Map Updates
We have updates to every map with changes ranging from smaller polish and added elements to whole new areas and traversal options. Let’s have a look at some of the changes across all maps:
Hard Sell
Changes in Hardsell have been focused on the vault area to offer more cover near the entrances and create new flank routes around the vault bathrooms.
Silver Reef
Silver Reef is getting a substantial update once again, this time both in and outside the vault. The central bridge on the first floor has been removed to better control player flow around the map and avoid all out third partying. A new staircase has been added on the vault side of the map to promote better interactions moving between floors.
On the vault front, a new vault entrance has been added near the aquarium area and additional flank routes have been added inside the vault to permit more interesting gameplay around the extraction phase.
Diamond Spire
Diamond Spire is getting a massive update with the main goal of reducing rooms without exits and smoother flow both in fights and in escape situations. Outside the vault, new scaffoldings have been added to create high profile escape options on both sides of the map.
The main hall also received new visual cover on all bridges and an opened up passage in the main lobby helicopter terminal that allows direct access to the vault door.
Inside the vault, two new restrooms have been added to give more free flowing options between the three main corridors and reduce pressure on the formerly only restroom.
Finally, the rooftop has been updated to add both a restroom and a staff room, making it a fully fledged floor in its own right with better looting and healing opportunities.
Fragrant Shore
Outside the vault, bespoke signs have been made for a variety of buildings to help players callout. A variety of store buildings have also been remade to have a clearer visual identity and more interesting layout. Food stands have added visual elements to also help them distinguish them further and better orient players.
Sound Eclipse
The lower part of the central hall now has stairs on both sides to allow better flow and prevent situations where players get trapped in a dead-end in an encounter. A new staff room has also been added to make the central hall a more appealing location and give it a natural flow from public, staff to guard room without having to change area.
Player Spawns Update
We have updated possible player spawn locations to limit close calls and have also implemented a new spawning feature specific to team modes (duo and trio). This new feature allows us more control for spacing out teams since they need more space than solo players to get a good early game experience.
Controller Experience Upgrade
Aim-Assist
Controller Aim-Assist has been reworked moving away from limited fix-points targeting on characters to using the character’s collision as the aim-assist target. This means that aim assist wil now pick-up the character as a whole making it possible to snap to any limb and help stick and move the reticle along the whole body rather than switching between individual points along the character’s body.
Another change on Aim-Assist is prioritization of hostile targets over passive-ones meaning that civilians will now be ignored by aim assist when engaging hostile guards or spies.
Finally, training dummies and some deployed gadgets like the remote turret will now be picked-up by aim assist and treated as valid targets.
Improved Input Remapping
Players can now remap move and view rotation input as well as drone’s ascension and descent inputs. Pregame lobby respawn menu has also been moved to a hold of the game menu button to free-up an input.
Reticle Customization
You can now head into the option menu to adjust the color and size of your reticle to your liking.
Spawning Logic Changes
We are rolling out changes to restricted areas composed of multiple rooms (like staff rooms in fragrant shore) that now make all differences considered a single room for the purpose of spawning items.
What this changes in practice is a better spread of keycards and items across the map since there will no longer be multiple blue keycards in a single staff room composed of multiple floors for example.
Vault Blue Keycards
We have added a pool of blue keycards to the vault to give a chance for players that have not been lucky in their looting in the first phase to catch up to other players in the infiltration part of the match.
We hope this makes matches more exciting and gives more opportunities for players to turn things around.
SpyBots for new player experience
With this update, we are introducing the first iteration of “spy bots” to the game. In this first phase, the bots will be spread through the matchmaking experience to help new players get a better grip of the gameplay without throwing them into the lion's den of full player matches.
Private Lobbies Update
We are rolling out a new option for private lobbies allowing you to play with everything unlocked for everyone, but with XP turned off entirely. We think this option is going to facilitate interesting gameplay ideas and allow players to experiment with things they have not yet unlocked in the real progression.
You can also fill a private lobby with bots to help full out your matches. Please note that this does not change the requirement of having at least two players to start a lobby as it still requires a dedicated server to start a game. Be aware that the bots will not be present in the pre-game lobby, but they will be part of your game once the action starts.
Bots are very much meant to be easy enemies to deal with in their current iteration and are not meant to be a challenging element, please keep this in mind if you plan on playing with bots in lobbies and we will continue iterating on their behavior in the future.
New Cosmetics
We have a bunch of new inks and poses. Some of them are added to loot briefcase pools and can also be obtained with credits, while a new Xiu intro-pose has been added to the store.
Balancing
Damage Falloff
A general element that will affect every weapon in the game in different ways is the rework of damage falloff. There previously was a little bit of falloff that would affect some weapons, but it was overall a very understated element of the game. Now, with recoil across the board at an all-time low, we needed a new balancing element that would prevent fast firing weapons from melting enemies from long distance with pinpoint accuracy.
We look forward to seeing your feedback on falloff and where we take it from here!
Resistant Status Effect
A major pain point for players in encounters was around the resistant status effect being too much of a differential. This would lead to fights feeling unfair and unfun. To remedy this, we are reducing the added bonus of the resistant effect to keep it as a substantial advantage, but making the fights feel more fair when it’s involved.
- Resistant damage reduction reduced 40% => 25%
Slow Status Effect
Another effect that can lead to oppressive outcomes is the slow. In this update, we are reducing the amount of speed reduction caused by the slow status effect across the board.
- Slow speed reduction 40% => 30%
Melee Aim-Assist adjustments
We have reduced the amount of stickiness that you would feel from launching a melee attack on a target. This should lead to a less jarring “snap” to correct a slightly off melee and make using the melee in combat more fluid.
Team Revive Health Tweaks
Getting revived in team modes now affects max health less than before to give more place to comebacks while still keeping a permanent consequence to losing team fights.
First Revive 80 => 85 HP
Second Revive 60 => 70 HP
Third Revive 40 => 55 HP
Weapon UI headshot display change
In this update, we are changing the way we display headshot damage on weapons. In the past, we would display a headshot modifier that you would have to apply to the damage value to get a good idea of its effect. This could be confusing, as some stronger weapons had lower multipliers, giving the impression that they are weaker than other weapons when the actual damage is still bigger after the operation.
To this effect, we are now displaying headshot damage directly to give a clearer sense of how much damage you will deal in-game.
Agents
Ace
Ace has been a big subject of discussion since the holiday rumble update. With this update, we want to tone down aspects of her kit that makes fighting her far too oppressive while keeping the strength of her powerful weapons and sniper identity.
Weapons
Ace’s passive charge time is now weapon driven. This means that her charge shot will charge the fastest on the jack and the slowest on the king, with the queen in-between.
Base: Queen of Diamond
- Passive charge Time .35s => 1s
- No damage falloff
Mod 1: Jack of Diamond
- Passive charge Time .35s => .45s
- Damage Falloff starts at 20m
Mod 2: King of Diamond
- Damage 46 => 45
- Headshot Damage 82 => 80
- Reload time 2.1s => 1.8s
- Passive charge Time .35s =>1.3s
- No damage falloff
Passive
We are significantly toning down the duration of status effects inflicted by Ace. They would lead to situations that could feel entirely hopeless or leave you with a long lasting effect well after your fight with Ace is over, contributing to frustrating third party situations.
All
- Change to weapon driven charge time for all passives.
Base: Diamond’s bet
- Exposed status duration 20s => 6s
Mod 1:Crippling Shot
- Slow duration 7s => 3s
Mod 2: Neutralizing Shot
- Neutralize duration 12s => 4s
Cavalière
Weapon adjustments for Cavalière are mostly centered around making her arsenal fit better with the new damage drop off reality and making sure the shots required to down a target feels good.
Weapons
Base: Dragoons
- Fire rate 4.0=> 4.5 shot per second
- Bullets per mag 14 => 12
- Reload Time 1.8s=>1.55s
- Falloff starts at 15m
Mod 1: Hydra
- Falloff starts at 20m
Mod 2: Wyvern
- Falloff starts at 10m
Passive
All
- Delay before shooting after melee .5s => .7s
Base: Tiger’s Leap
- Added a bit more impulse so that Cavalière can travel farther with this skill fully charged.
Expertise
Chavez
Our goal with Chavez this update is very clear: Reduce player frustration when fighting against him and give ourselves some design leeway to make his weapons more different with different ammo capacities. We know it’s been a difficult time fighting a resistant Chavez armed with the duke, so let’s have a look at how we are tackling this.
Weapons
Base: Sentinel
- Fire rate 1.1 => 1 shot per second
- Headshot damage 51=> 50
- Damage Falloff starts at 20m
Mod 1: Vigilante
- Transformed from a 6 shooter to a 9 shooter for a stronger “fast shooter” identity.
- Reload time 1.15s => 1.5s
- Damage Falloff starts at 15m
Mod 2: Duke
- Transformed from a 6 shooter to a 4 shot hand cannon to better enforce the “precision” identity.
- Headshot damage 80 => 60
- Damage Falloff starts at 25m
Passive
Mod 2: Tough as Nails
- Max overheal amount 50 => 25
- Overheal takes longer to start decay but starts at the same time (5 seconds)
Expertise
Base: Hard Boiled
- Duration reduced 7s => 5s
Mod 1: Unshakeable Fortress
- Duration reduced 15s => 7s
Mod 2: Return to sender
- Duration reduced 3.5s => 2.5s
Hans
While the nerfs to the slow status effect and the recoil overhaul affect Hans by the wayside, the more specific changes are focused around his damage drop-off balancing.
Weapons
Base: Hook
- Damage Falloff for hip fire starts at 10 meters
- Damage Falloff for ADS starts at 25 meters
Mod 1: Jab
- Damage Falloff for hip fire starts at 10 meters
- Damage Falloff for ADS starts at 20 meters
Mod 2: Uppercut
- Damage Falloff for hip fire starts at 10 meters
- Damage Falloff for ADS starts at 25 meters
Larcin
We are adjusting damage falloff for Larcin to make sure his weapons fit his closer range identity and playstyle.
Weapons
Base: Silence
- Damage falloff starts at 15m
Mod 1: Cadence
- Damage falloff starts at 20m
Mod 2: Violence
- Damage falloff starts at 15m (for shots, throw is unaffected)
Expertise
Mod 1: Grande Finale
- Cooldown now starts when the zone finishes instead of during the zone.
Mod 2: Tour du monde
- Changed the trail VFX around Larcin’s position to make it more readable to enemies in pursuit.
Madame Xiu
Our main change around Xiu is to tweak her Mamba’s Hunch ability to make it easier to understand for victims and give them some tools to play around it.
Weapons
Base: Zhulong
- Damage falloff starts at 10m
Mod 1: Longshen
- Damage falloff starts at 20m
Mod 2: Xuanwu
- Damage falloff starts at 10m
Passive
Mod 2: Mamba’s Hunch:
- Rival players now get a notification when Xiu gets an update on their current position.
- There is now a minimum buffer between two triggers of Mamba’s Hunch to prevent a Xiu player from getting two updates in a very short period of time, allowing very precise pinpointing. This means that the final vault terminal and the vault opening will only give a single ping of all players instead of two within 15 seconds.
Octo
Beside the damage falloff adjustment for his weapons, Octo is getting a tweak to his intel refund rate on his base passive. The very high chance of refund on low intel was a bit much, affecting the extraction phase quite a bit in particular.
Weapons
Base: Pulpo
- Damage falloff starts at 20m (does not affect intel projectile)
Mod 1: Nautilo
- Damage falloff starts at 10m (does not affect intel projectile)
Mod 2:Calamari
- Damage Falloff starts at 10m (does not affect intel projectile)
Passive
Base: On the house
- % chance of getting a intel refund when 10 intel away from max 40% =>25%
- % chance of getting a intel refund when 20 intel away from max 65% =>50%
Red
Red is a good example of a character that we feel benefits quite a bit from the introduction of a more pronounced damage dropoff with her very distinctive weapon options. Our focus with Red is to give clearer identity and make her options excel in different circumstances. As such, we are giving back a faster fire rate to her base weapon to make it really stand out while keeping this in check with a more aggressive damage falloff range.
Weapons
Base: Heartbreaker
- Fire rate 5.7 => 6 shots per second
- Damage falloff starts at 10m
Mod 1: Jack of heart
- Damage falloff starts at 20m
Mod 2: Lovebite
- Fire rate 1.3 => 1.15 shots per second
- Damage falloff starts at 10m
- Heart spray pattern is back on ADS shots but with a tighter spread than the original iteration.
Passive
With Guards generating passive heat on aggro, we revisited the range of Red’s Naughty list to prevent it from being too potent at tracking down spies in a tough spot.
Mod 2: Naughty List
- Reduced distance from which Red can see rivals with a heat level: 120m => 60m
Sasori
Since projectile weapons are already quite a challenge to land at range, we are not adding damage falloff to them. Still, Sasori has a whole new element to contend with thanks to the addition of first aid vials.
Weapons
Mod 1: Hyo & Hanei
- Fire rate for a single un-charge kunai has been made 10% faster.
- Added a visual element on the reticle that indicates clearly when the weapon is fully charged.
Expertise
All
Poisoned spies cannot use first aid vials until the effect wears off.
Squire
We are taking some time with the addition of damage falloff to give a clearer gameplay use case to Squire’s arsenal. We are positioning the lance as a fast-firing well balanced option, the trident as a stronger close quarter burst weapon and the javelin as a precision longer range option. We think these tweaks will open up more opportunities to choose one weapon over the other depending on gameplay preferences.
Weapons
Base: Lance
- Damage 20 => 16
- Fire rate 2.5 => 3.3 shots per second
- Magazine capacity 10 => 12
- Damage falloff starts at 15m
Mod 1: Trident
- Damage per bullet 9 => 11 (33 in a burst)
- Delay between bursts reduced .33s => .30s
- Damage falloff starts at 10m
Mod 2:Javelin
- Damage 25 => 24
- Headshot Damage 44 => 34
- Fire rate 1.9 => 1.8 shots per second
- Damage falloff starts at 25m
Passive
Base: Always Ready
- Hitting a rival spy from cover will now also trigger the amped up effect.
Expertise
Base: Eyes on the prize
- Added Lost and found boxes, First Aid Vials and Vault printers to the list of detected items.
Yu-Mi
With her weapons un-affected by falloff, our focus has been on finding a fun twist for her under-used EMP flock ability. In this update, we are trying out a new sticky projectile that you can place on spies and npc alike to create moving zones of denial.
Weapons
All
- Added a visual element on the reticle that indicates clearly when the weapon is fully charged.
Expertise
Mod 2: EMP flock
- Projectiles now stick to npc or players directly hit by the bubble.
- Bubble applies the neutralized status effect instead of slow.
- Bubble stills apply exposed like the base variation, preventing victims from regaining cover for the duration.
Gadgets
Umbrella Shield
- Interact time to pick up a deployed shield has been raised to 2 seconds to prevent quick juggling of picking then dropping the shield during a fight.
- Picking up the shield will now cancel ADS, preventing players from pre-charging shots from picking it up.
- The deployed shield will now break instantly if its owner gets eliminated.
- Deployed shield weak point now has aim-assist for controllers to help shoot it.
Remote Turret
- No longer generates heat for the player when shooting at guards.
For a full list of bug fixes, please see the changelog posted at the Official Forums!
Considering the scale of this update and how deeply it changes multiple facets of the game, we would like to have an open dialogue with the community on what is liked, what is not liked and what you would like to see changed in an upcoming hot patch following the release of Operation Overhaul Phase 1. Drop into our Discord feedback section or the Official Forums!