Post-Jatimania Update
Thanks to your tireless effort (and a little help from a mysterious figure working behind the scenes), Deceive Inc. has figured out how to counteract the hypnotic effects of Jati’s collectables, making us all safe from the JATIMANIA. With this return to normality, we bring some bug fixes and updates while we prepare for our next season.
General
A blast from the past
We are bringing back the original pre-game lobby and theme music as we prepare for season 4. We hope you enjoy the old school vibes!
Bots Update
In addition to multiple bug fixes, bots will now actively update their cover security level and enter the vault as the game progresses to give them a more player-like behavior.
Movement Replication Update
Updates to how we handle character movement which should reduce rubber banding in latency situations, especially while running.
Player Cover Behavior Update
Experienced players have known about a key difference between players in cover and NPC for a while now: Players in cover bumping into a npc will not react at all, while npc do a small wiggle to try and avoid the other character.
With this update, the cover of the player will do this avoidance move when colliding with another NPC by itself, removing this tell that was impossible to know about for newer players.
Balance
Agents
Ace
With tracking abilities being a powerful tool, we are looking to raise their base cooldown across the board to make them appear a bit less often for victims.
Expertise
Base: Queen’s Gaze
- Cooldown raised from 30s => 40s
Mod 1: Stacked Odds
- Cooldown raised from 30s => 40s
Cavalière
Just like Ace, Cavalière is getting a cooldown adjustment on her base tracking abilities and a refund tweak to reduce the constant uptime of her investigation skill.
Expertise
Base: Investigation
- Refunds on cancel decreased from 80% to 50%.
- Cooldown raised from 30s => 40s
Expertise Mod 2: Redemption
- Cooldown raised from 30s => 40s
Special Note: This ability will be getting some love with mechanical changes with season 4 as we know it’s currently not competitive vs Cav’s other options.
Hans
Hans’s jab is getting a bit of love to make it more viable while the upper cut is getting a nerf to reduce its extreme potential in close quarters.
Weapon
Mod 1: The Jab
- Damage 23 => 27 (all pellets hit)
- Reload time 1.85s => 1.75s
Special Note: We are reworking the spray of this weapon for season 4 to make it more efficient, this should still help it perform better in the meantime.
Mod 2: The Uppercut
- Damage 45 => 40 (all pellets hit)
- Reload time 1.6s => 1.9s
Madame Xiu
Xiu ‘s Xuanwu has been a very underwhelming option for a long time and we want it to be a more viable choice. We will deliver more improvements to this weapon in season 4, but in the meantime we wanted to make it a stronger pick with a damage buff.
Weapon
Mod 2: Xuanwu
- Damage per shot 6 => 7
Sasori
Our goal with Sasori is to tone down the sheer power of his weapon mod 1 while keeping its identity as intact as possible. We are also making an animation adjustment to his run cycle to make encounters against him more fair overall.
General
- Running animation tweaks to reduce the amount of variance when trying to aim for the head.
Weapon Mod 1: Hyo & Hanei
- Can no longer charge while interacting.
- Damage per Kunai 8(40 total) => 7 (35 total)
- Headshot Damage per Kunai 16 (80 Total) => 10 (50 total)
- Charged Katana Damage 70 => 60
Yu-Mi
Just like Sasori, Yu-mi is getting a run cycle adjustment to make it less frustrating when trying to land headshots on her. In addition, we are looking to buff her base weapon slightly while toning down her other options that could lead to fights feeling very hopeless on the receiving end.
General
- Running animation tweaks to reduce the amount of bobbing making shots difficult.
Weapon
Base: Tactical Slingshot
- Headshot Damage 33 => 34
Mod 1: Experimental Split Shot
- Charge Time 1s => 1.2s
- Uncharged Damage 6 per pellet (30) => 5 per pellet (25)
- Charged Damage 9 per pellet (45) => 7 per pellet (35)
Mod 2: Heavy Longshot
- Charge Time 1.3s => 1.5s
- Charged Damage 51 => 50
- Charged Damage Headshot 90 =>80
Bug Fixes
General
- Fixed bots moving at run speed when walking.
- Fixed bots not fighting back against aggro-ed guards in some cases.
- Fixed Jati Mania items that did not have event icons.
- Fixed issue where the map name and mode name could overlap in the pre-game lobby.
- Fixed legibility issues in loading screens.
Gadgets
- Shield Brella health’s gauge will now correctly update when regenerating health over time.
- Fixing a bug where the goo pod could have the incorrect state between server and client.
Audio
- Fixed an issue that caused Squire’s Javelin sound to be occluded too soon.
- Fixed an issue that caused the turret to have more occlusion than intended.
- Added audio occlusion to more npc events so they fit the rest of the sounds in the game.
What’s Next?
Quite simply: Season 4! This next update will include both the “traditional” seasonal content you would expect (catalog and a new agent) and a continuation of the operation overhaul initiative. We also wanted to give some transparency on our current priorities and acknowledge that we are aware of some top issues we are looking into.
Bug Fixing
First of all: Bug fixes. We are well aware of major bugs plaguing agents and their abilities (Yu-Mi being a particular focus) and we are putting a lot of effort into tackling these. The complexity of some of these issues means that we sometimes ship smaller bug fixes instead of solving this immediately, but rest assured that this does not mean we are not aware or not working on them. We will have a healthy list of bug fixes coming into the game when Season 4 drops and will continue this endeavor beyond.
Extraction Phase
Another big area of focus is making the extraction phase more dynamic. We are looking to tackle ping stalling and other un-fun situations that are a bit too efficient currently in the meta.
Clarity and onboarding
We are also aware of the lack of clarity on a lot of elements in agents' descriptions and the dossier menu. Our first area of action is to update this information in cases where they are not accurate, but we are considering possible solutions to have better information in the game in the future and make this a more in-depth ressource for newcomers.
Beyond Season 4
Finally, we are still looking at major elements for overhauls and you can expect more of these reworks to come after Season 4’s launch. We want to keep upgrading both core aspects of the game (melee reliability is a particular sore spot from feedback we receive) and rework some character kits to make them both more interesting or less meta.(Larcin’s Grande Finale comes to mind as an ability we want to rework extensively).