Post Beta Dev Update

Several weeks ago we held our largest public test ever during the Closed Beta. Our primary focus during this testing period was to figure out how we can improve matchmaking, and test our online infrastructure. We also paid close attention to feedback in order to fine tune gameplay elements ahead of launch. A couple weeks ago we released an infographic detailing some gameplay stats from the beta, and now we’re ready to share some updates we’ve made to the game based on your feedback and our own observations:

Balancing

Operators

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**SHIELD OPERATORS: Reduced hipfire accuracy plus other small balancing tweaks
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• Laser sight bonus reduction will decrease the efficiency of hip firing.

• Dispersion increased by 2.5x while hip firing with a shield equipped.

• Dispersion further increased up to 5x while taking fire on the shield.

During the Closed Beta, players above clearance level 20+ had a kill-death ratio of 1.96 while playing shield operators, and 1.31 without. We also saw this pattern in the win-loss ratio: Blitz and Montagne have the best win-loss ratio in Attack. Reserve attackers with shields were not taken into our calculations, and Fuze was an anomaly mostly because his AK was the preferred loadout, not the shield.

The purpose behind these specific changes is to focus the shield operators on playing a support position. They are meant to provide cover to their teammates firing from behind. We will continue to review these operators, and all others, in the post-launch.

PULSE: Cardiac Sensor has been polished for greater player comfort

• Added 3D visual Feedback on the screen with a 'sonar style' feel. This should increase navigational comfort for players while using Pulse. We also increased the refresh-rate of detection and accelerated the booting of the device.

Early in development there was a lot of concern over Pulse’s cardiac sensor being too effective. We made several changes to the gadget after the Closed Alpha and sure enough, our data during Closed Beta shows that Pulse is pretty evenly balanced. He’s ranked 5th (out of 7) for defense operators based on win-loss ratio, and is ranked 3rd based on K/D ratio. Still, he was one of the lesser chosen operators overall and we realized the gameplay might not be fun enough, so we added some polish.

**IQ: Increased the range of detection for the EDD to 15m. We didn't want to increase too much or else the player would detect too many gadgets at one time, making the situation difficult to read.

BANDIT: Increased damage given by electrified gadgets and reduced visual audio feedback for rival team. Opponents will need to be closer to detect. Increased damage values are not yet final.

Weapons & Gadgets**

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416-C: Increased recoil to be on par with other rifles

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Shooting Mechanics

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GRIPS: Reduced recoil reduction bonus

• During Closed Beta, adding a grip to a firearm lowered recoil by 40%. Now it is lowered by only 25%.

LASER SIGHTS: Reduced the accuracy bonus

• During Closed Beta, laser sights gave firearms a 40% accuracy bonus, which we've reduced to around 23%.

These changes are meant to reduce the overall effectiveness of hipfiring, and encourage more tactical, purposeful shooting in ADS.

Terrorist Hunt

DIFFICULTY LEVEL: We've heightened the challenge for all difficulty levels

• Normal: AI accuracy increased by 40%, damage increased by 5%.
• Hard: AI accuracy at mid-range increased by about 20%, with quicker reaction times and a damage boost.
• Realistic: Reaction time even faster. AI accuracy has been further improved based on distance and weapon used.

As mentioned in the Closed Beta Infographic, the completion percentage on Normal was 91%, Hard was 58%, and 19% for Realistic. This data is observed and balanced for 5 person teams, and we're aiming for achieve 60%/30%/10%, respectively.

BOMBERS: Several updates to improve gameplay experience with Bombers.

• Bomber movement outside of buildings has been limited to only one Bomber.
• The damage curve for Bombers now diminishes the further away the player is from the source of the explosion. Explosions used to maximum damage no matter where you were in the damage radius.
• Note: You can also use EMPs to disable the Bomber's explosive device.
• Teleport bug fixed.

NITRO CELLS: Damage reduced

• Reduced damage output of Terrorist Hunt nitro cells.
• Removed problematic nitro cell placements (couldn't shoot it, find it, otherwise inaccessible, etc).

While carefully sweeping an area room to room is an important part of Terrorist Hunt, we found there was a lot of frustration with the number of nitro cell insta-kills. These updates are meant to provide a less frustrating, but still engaging and tense experience.

Online and Matchmaking

MATCHMAKING: Multiple long-term improvements

• Thanks to all the data gathered during the Closed Beta, we have decided to remove some unnecessary complexities of the underlying matchmaking systems, while preserving our core values of matching players based on (not sorted by priority) their skill, account level, network performance and geographical location. We’re not ready to release the details until a couple more tests have been run, but we’ve seen very significant improvements in matchmaking times.

ONLINE MULTIPLAYER: Downtime between rounds reduced by about 30 seconds

• All end-of-round reports (meter and scoreboard) are now removed. Scoreboard can be accessed from the Operator selection screen.
• Best of 5 for unranked matches, 6 rounds + best of 3 overtime for ranked matches.
• [Unranked Only] Objective and insertion point voting for ATK and DEF removed, and will be random. The game will communicate the spawn location during the operator loading screen.

Players felt like there was too much downtime between rounds, and these changes were made to give a more consistent game time during the course of a match.

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RANKED: New Details

• Ranked matches have voting on spawn/objective location

• Ranked matches do NOT have Death Replays

• Ranked matches will utilize a minimal HUD setting

  • No scoring indicators
  • No grenade indicators
  • No threat indicators
  • No reload indicators
  • No teammate outline
  • No kill confirmation marker

This is just a small sample of what the Ranked gameplay experience will look like. More details to come.

CUSTOM MATCHES: New Details

• Will be playable on dedicated servers (in an update shortly after launch), with the following constraints:

  • Match requires 10 players in it
  • The data center that will host the game will be the closest one to the player who created the custom game session.
  • Once the lobby has been created, the server will wait a certain amount of time for it to be filled up to 10 players. If the wait duration goes above a certain limit, the custom game session will be cancelled.
  • Custom games hosted on dedicated servers will not be listed and will be accessed by invitation only, after the lobby is created.

• Custom matches that aren't held on dedicated servers (LAN or peer-to-peer) will be listed in a server browser.

VOTE KICK: Now only requires a majority vote to work (ex: if there are 5 players, it requires 3 votes. If there are 3 players, it requires 2).

VOIP: Push-to-Talk notifications in game switched from blinking to static when talking.

UI/UX

MENUS: Visual upgrade overhaul on all menus

• General visual upgrades
• When customizing weapons, you can now put them in full-screen
• Unified Operator badges - Special color pallet by CTU with better readability. New badges based on unique gameplay aspect of each Operator.

OTHER

PROPER TERMINOLOGY: Magazines are now called magazines, and not referred to as 'clips'.