Game Update - 1/17

Weapon Tuning, horizontal recoil, Skull boosts and more!

 

 

Servers are coming offline at 7AM PT (1/17) with an approximate downtime of 6 hours. For more detailed information on weapon tuning values, please read our latest Dev Blog from Lead Combat Designer, Tony "Carto" Morton (this will be made available when the game update hits Live).

This game update includes the following:

Weapon Tuning

AR-15

• The recoil model has been changed and will now feature horizontal only recoil when tapping. If a user begins to spam, vertical recoil will kick in and combat spray.
• The bullet speed has been reduced to match the AK
• The bullet drop has been increased to match the AK

AK-47

• The recoil model for single fire mode has been changed to match the old recoil model of the last iteration of the AR-15. It will now have a shallow V pattern when tapping, direction of kick is still random.
• The refire and reset times have been reduced to match those of the AR-15.
• The above changes also helped smooth out recoil in full auto mode slightly increasing the guns usefulness when that fire mode is selected.

SMG

• Added falloff that starts at 25 meters and ends at 50
• The falloff includes a penalty to the headshot multiplier, taking it from 4x to 2x at maximum falloff range (50m)
• SMG ammo clip has been increased to 30 bullets, up from 24.

Shotgun

• Reduced recoil for both ADS and hipfire
• Increased shotgun effective range
• Tightened spread slightly

Magnum

• Slightly more vertical recoil
• Greatly increased damage to vehicles from 3% per bullet to 8%.  Magnums will be far more effective at disabling vehicles now.
• Magnum shoots slightly slower now, refire time from 420ms to 450ms.
• Bullet drop slightly increased

Sniper Rifle

• Much more initial sway when first Scoping in – Holding your Breath (default Shift) will steady this for a while.
• Holding breath with the Sniper Rifle now has an appropriate sound effect.
• Decreased time to Scope.  This makes the sniper feel snappier but with the sway changes, forces the shooter to work with a smaller window of opportunity to fire a shot.
• Decreased projectile speed.
• Bullet drop was increased slightly
• Sniper scope was decreased from a 8X to a 4x scope

Game updates

• Weapons now spawn with a single ammo box instead of two.  Total ammo spawned is unchanged.
• Added a small HUD element to show reload timer.
• Added icons to the HUD to show AK-47 fire mode (single shot versus full auto).
• Additional HUD optimizations for minor performance improvements.
• Players are now able to purchase 7-day boosts to increase the rate at which they can earn Skulls via Daily Challenges. Read all the details of this new system here.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue with the recoil system that was allowing for variable recoil on the first shot.  First shot recoil is now consistent as long as you wait for it to reset.
• Players will no longer go into a stuck state when healing through gas damage.
• Steam friends with special characters in their names should now display correctly.
• Fixed the issue causing the packet loss message to incorrectly display.
• Firing ranges for all arrow types is now consistent.
• Fixed jerky weapon movement when shooting the AK-47 in first person.
• Magnum damage to off-roaders is now consistent with other vehicles.
• Bullet visual and sound effects from other players are no longer delayed if shot immediately after throwing a grenade.

Known Issues

• Occasionally, the team HUD will be missing when in Fort Destiny.  It re-appears when you enter the game.
• Occasionally, the reload timer bar does not function properly and stays full.  This happens more frequently in Combat Zone than in other modes.

North America Server

In order to keep games starting quickly and to bring the player base together, we are going to bring both NA West and NA East together. When logging in you will see just one server for North America. The physical location of the server will remain on the East Coast, as we discovered after further investigation that creating a central server would lead to a degraded experience for players.

We predict that this change will lead to players spending less time in Fort Destiny, and it will also improve the experience for South America and Europe players should they choose to play there. We will be closely monitoring this experimental decision to see how performance is impacted overall and will make adjustments as needed.