June Update
Agents, we are back with a a few items of focus:
- Quality of Life
- Bug Fixes
- Major map reworks
In addition to the above, the team is hard at work on a major update that will introduce more changes as well as a live event later this summer, but we wanted to drop some improvements in the shorter term to keep the ball rolling.
Without further ado, let’s get into it!
General
Field Upgrade Decks
Managing multiple field upgrade decks for different playstyle has been a pain and the addition of more agents to the roster has only made things more complicated. With this update, we are adding some much needed quality of life to playing with multiple decks.
Decks Saved Per Agent
Much like gadgets, the deck you have equipped will now be saved only to the specific agent you are on in the menu. This means you can equip a specifically made deck per agent without having to swap it out everytime you take another character for a spin.
Added more deck slots
With 12 agents in the roster, it only felt natural to upgrade the amount of decks from 8 to 12! You can now make bespoke decks for every single character to fit your playstyle.
Changes to the default deck
A piece of feedback we received often is that the default field upgrade deck is not well suited for new players. To address this, we have made changes that add a bit more all around utility and puts less stress on getting a gold field upgrade to reach its full potential.
The new default kit is:
- Gray: Extended Ammo Pouch
- Green: Bulletproof Fabric
- Blue: Social Battery
- Purple: Field Agent Kit
- Orange: Overclock Chip
Gameflow Interaction Times
When we introduced vault printers, we did so with the intent of calming down the rush inside the vault and setting a minimum time players will have to deal with before getting the objective. While it did accomplish its goal, a general topic of feedback we’ve been tracking is that it could probably go a bit farther in this minimum time direction.
To do so, we are removing a selection of objects from the list of items that get reduced hacking time from the overclock chip field upgrade. This includes:
- Vault Printers
- Objective Pedestal
- Extraction terminals
Our goal with this is to ensure a minimum time that is respected by all rules in the game when it comes to the base gameflow. We will monitor how this affects the game for possible further changes in this direction.
Map Updates
Diamond Spire
We have expanded all guard rooms in Diamond Spire except the lobby guard room (it was already the biggest in the map) to allow multiple points of entry and more interesting encounters.
Additionally, we have further color-coded the different floors to make them easier to recognize and added some cover/loot spots for areas that felt a bit too empty in the past.
Fragrant shore
Fragrant Shore’s E terminal location is getting a full refresh, complete with a secondary entrance in the back-alley and a secret exit from the second floor that does not lead you to be seen by everyone on the main road.
Pride Inks
Celebrate your pride with an assortment of new summer pride inks available to purchase with credits from the ink menu!
Balance
Agents
Cavalière
We are starting a pass to curate some reload speed that gives too low of an opening for rivals to exploit on weapons that are very reliable and fast firing. For Cavalière, that means bringing her base weapon closer to her other options in terms of reload downtime.
Weapon
Weapon 1: Dragoons
- Reload Time 1.55s => 1.8s
Chavez
In the same theme, Chavez’s vigilante is a very reliable option with extremely low downtime to reload. We are raising this a bit to give more opportunity and breathing rooms to combat where it is involved.
Weapon
Weapon 2: Vigilante
- Reload Time 1.5s => 1.75s
Larcin
Larcin’s ammo economy with violence has always been tighter than his other options by design. We are giving him a bit more leeway when the match starts to put him less at a disadvantage in case of an early game fight. We will be looking through the roster for other weapons that might need this treatment in the future.
We also want to note that Larcin’s weapon 1 is a prime candidate to get a reloading speed tweak like Cavalière and Chavez, but the throw adds more implications that we need a bit more time to deal with, leaving him untouched for now.
Weapon
Weapon 3: Violence
- Starting ammo 12 => 16
Vigil
Expertise
Expertise 1: Smoke Launcher
- Fire Rate 1.25 => 1.5
Passive
For the season 4 hotfix, we raised vigil’s passive cooldown significantly to prevent passive spam. While this was seen as necessary in the short term to prevent very powerful strategies, it was not an ideal solution.
With this update, we are changing how vigil’s passive cooldown works. Instead of having a very long cooldown that starts on the throw, we are making the cooldown shorter and starting once the passive expires or is destroyed. This especially benefits the proximity mine since its ideal use case sees it destroyed immediately after use.
All
- Changed cooldown for all passives to start timer after it’s destroyed or expires.
Passive 1: Sonar
- Cooldown now starts when expired or destroyed instead of when thrown
- Cooldown 15s => 5s
Passive 2: Proximity Mine
- Cooldown now starts when expired or destroyed instead of when thrown
- Cooldown 12s => 4s
- Damage from the mine no longer builds up heat when it hits NPCs in the radius.
Passive 3: EMF Jammer
- Cooldown now starts when expired or destroyed instead of when thrown
- Cooldown 16.5s => 8.5s
- EMF Duration 8s => 10s
Field Upgrades
Social Battery
Low levels of social battery were not viable picks in most builds, making choices less interesting in how to approach social battery placement. With this update we hope to make the low level of this upgrade an interesting pick without making its strongest version stronger than it already is.
- Gray: 1HP =>2HP per second
- Green: 2HP =>3HP per second
- Blue 3HP =>4HP per second
Bug Fixes
General
- Weapons with missing vibration on controllers now behave correctly.
- Fixed an issue to npc weighting that would lead to guard rooms in particular having less npc presence than intended.
- Fixed doors getting players stuck inside in a variety of situations when closing.
- Getting duplicate legendaries will now award credits correctly.
- Fixed an issue that resulted in players having less ammo than intended in pre-game lobby.
- Vigil’s missing pose is now available.
- Upped Spectator Cam sensitivity substantially on controller.
- Fixed level up bars raising infinitely in a variety of circumstances.
- Server side optimizations on danger events to reduce latency in situations where a lot of npcs are alerted
- Fixed an issue where guards could scold out of cover spies instead of aggroing them.
Agent
Special Notes: We are currently working on a bunch of Yu-Mi issues that have been plaguing the game for a while. Yu-Mi being a complex character technically, we need to set a good amount of time for the team to tackle them. We expect to release some of these fixes in our next big update.
Ace
- Ace can no longer mash reload to reload faster than intended with the king.
Red
- Server side performance optimization on red’s active to reduce latency that could happen when used.
Sasori
- Fixed sword sound playing when hacking.
- Fix to inconsistency for damage on noxious gas
Vigil
- Expertise 2 now has aim-assist like other weapons should on controllers.
- Fixed an issue that led to the proximity mine not behaving properly on some surfaces, namely doors.
Levels
Fragrant shore
- Fixed a large number of stairs that would not offer a proper path to NPCS.