Welcome to the latest update to take centre stage in Dirty Bomb. Along with balance changes and a ton of squashed bugs, we also welcome some User Interface upgrades, ‘Chapel’ map updates, experience earn-rate tweaks and of course, ‘Fletcher’ joins the crew.
STICKY BOMB!!! The bombs are in town and there is only one guy man enough to handle them. Fletcher, a stylish combat engineer, is hauling his collection of sticky bombs to London along with his detonator to bring the pain…and a whole load of explosions.
‘Quick Play’ Update
We’ve spent a lot of time making tweaks to the ‘Quick Play’ function within the game. Now when you play, you will only be placed in servers with under 100ms ping for better connectivity. Plus, we fixed an issue where it would try and match you into ‘Level Locked’ servers, so no more will you fail to connect for this reason. ‘Quick Play’ also takes the average skill-rating of the server into account when placing you to make for a much more balanced and enjoyable experience.
http://i.imgur.com/i07PWwf.png
Ranked Play Level Cap
Upon receiving a lot of feedback from players about Ranked Match Making, we decided to reduce the level cap from 7 to 6. This will help when searching for a game and should increase the population of ranked play.
Asia Now in Matchmaking
That’s right! Now when you want to go into a game, it is not just Europe, North America and Australia you can choose from, we have now added Asia into the Matchmaking system to give you a better and lag-free experience.
Full Breakdown
GENERAL BALANCE
• Reduced third person crouching animation speed to better match the first-person view changes
As well as providing more accurate feedback, this also goes a little way to counter the crouch-spam complaints players have been having
• Spending more time in the air (wall jumping) after a Long Jump, it now reduces the recovery time when landing as intended
This reverts a recent change that was introduced when optimising the movement system and should encourage a little more advanced movement
• Reduced collision box of all thrown Grenades so they more accurately fit the model
Grenades can now fit through smaller gaps and bounce of geometry more realistically, fixing a common frustration of many players
• Made C4 easier to disarm by increasing the range of the tools and the size of the C4 detection box
This is also improves the priority system when both Help-Up and Disarm are available options
• Increased the explosive damage required to insta-gib to 150 (from 120)
This is to reduce the occurrence of explosive insta-gibs, which will now only be awarded for point-blank hits with powerful explosives such as Frag Grenades
EXPERIENCE SYSTEM
• Increased the XP given for support actions and general ability usage
This is to balance out XP earn rates amongst the Mercs and also encourage more use of these abilities
• Significantly increased XP given for completing or reversing objectives
This is to better reward players who focus on objectives over combat, as they were previously being under represented
• Removed Battlesense XP awarding
The XP system is intended to be an obvious award and incentive for positive actions and Battlesense was too obscure and misunderstood to be fulfilling this function. With the above two changes, overall XP earning should remain about the same.
Mercs
NADER
• Increased health to 110hp (from 100)
This is to help her better fulfill her role of clearing out defensive positions which often requires her to expose herself to incoming fire
• Reduced movement speed by ~2.5%
Matching / compensating for the slight increase in health
• Increased maximum Grenade Launcher Nade count to 5 (from 4) and reduced cooldown time per Nade to 7s (from 8)
These changes are to partially compensate for the two below, but also makes her a little more effective at clearing out defences
• Reduced velocity of grenade launcher projectiles by ~30%
Grenade Launcher 'Nades maintain a similar trajectory but now travel slower, giving victims a little more time to react
• Increased grenade launcher grenade fuse time to 1.7s (from 1.4s)
This is to compensate for the slower travel time, still giving them a similar overall range
• Martyrdom can no-longer be cancelled by gibbing Nader before it detonates
The previous behaviour meant that Martyrdom became largely useless at close range and was not immediately obvious or easily explain
• Martyrdom detonation time increased to 0.9s (from 0.7s)
To give players a little more time to escape since they can no longer cancel it by gibbing Nader
FRAGGER
• Frag Grenade throwing velocity reduced by ~25%
Frag Grenades maintain a similar trajectory but now travel slower, giving victims a little more time to react
• Added a team-coloured trail to Fragger’s Grenades
This will make them easier to spot and also help players know where Fragger is throwing them from
VASSILI
• Heartbeat Sensors throwing velocity reduced by ~25%
This keeps all smaller thrown grenades at a consistent speed & trajectory, making them easier to learn
Weapons
GENERAL WEAPONS
• Switching between movement states now has a greater impact on weapon spread, with slightly better rewards for crouching and greater penalties for jumping.
Jumping spam in combat has been an on-going issue we’ve wanted to resolve without making the game feel sluggish or unresponsive. This should make jumping and firing less effective while also giving a slight additional spread benefit to crouching and other states.
• Reduced sniper scope sway when moving
This was a common complaint after the recent updates so has been dramatically reduced
K-121 Machine Gun
• Increased minimum starting spread by ~10%
This is to reduce initial tap-fire and burst accuracy which is currently making this MG the most accurate auto in the game
Levels
-Added ammo-crates and bombsite markers to Overground Execution level
-Continued optimization work on Underground and Trainyard
-Rebuilt lighting and fixed numerous bugs on the Tutorial level
-Rebuilt lighting and audio-maps on all levels
-Secondary generator can no longer be cycled once the EV has reached the barricade on ‘Bridge’
-Redesigned first attackers spawn to fix spawn camping issue on Chapel (click the image below for full size).http://i.imgur.com/dmQ4Ntk.jpg
User Interface
• Improved ‘Play’ button flow
• Melee weapons no-longer count towards ‘Favourite Weapon’ in the front end, as everyone knows you run faster with the knife…
• Improved appearance of friends interface
• Added ‘Objective Specialist’ icon and text to appropriate Mercs in their Profile screens
• Reworded “Casual Match” to “Quick Play”
• Added Case count to the Loadouts tab
• Added deployable status indicators to the Ability HUD
• Added level progression to the front-end player avatar
• Disable play button when in lobby or matchmaking
