Like we previously discussed in our “what’s coming for DI” brief, we have been working on updating expertise options for multiple characters in season 5. We have three characters getting an update to their kit and we wanted to give a sneak peek at one of them here today. Without further ado, let's talk about the one and only Chavez and how his expertise 2 is poised to change in season 5. Keep in mind, the balancing aspects of the ability are very much in the process of being tweaked and might be different at release. Now let’s get to it!
Immovable object becomes an unstoppable force. It has become a bit of a meme how passive Chavez is as a character. The entirety of his toolkit is built with a very defensive approach which leaves very little lee-way to create a different build for him. His expertise 2 is the biggest offender in that regard. The resistant status effect has always been a contentious subject and having a playstyle that rewards you for simply standing in a circle while shooting was not very interesting.
Enter ALL-STAR, a new expertise replacing unshakable fortresses starting with season 5.
ALL-STAR puts Chavez into a stance where he gains amped up, but cannot shoot for 5 seconds. During that stance, he can shove any npc he enters in contact with. When colliding with a spy, Chavez deals damage and breaks both his and their cover while shoving them away with FORCE.
Additionally, Chavez can open doors immediately by ramming them in this stance if he either has the intel/keycard to open it or if it’s already unlocked. The intel will still be consumed when opening a door in this way, but it won’t stop your charge, allowing for very decisive actions.
We have a lot of fun using this ability to play Chavez in all new ways and we think this new energetic take on the character is going to make quite a splash once it hits the game. We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek at what’s coming and we’ll be back with more very soon.
Double XP is live all weekend long!
Agents, Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take advantage of Double XP in the field this weekend. It will be available today until October 7th at 1 p.m. EDT. Whether you work alone or have a trusted group of spy professionals to bring along, it's time to suit up in your favorite disguise, bring your favorite gadgets, and put those spy skills to work.
Rogue Waters - Available now!
Tripwire Presents and Ice Code Games would like to invite you aboard a pirate ship! Our new game, Rogue Waters, is available now! It's a roguelite melee tactical focused on faster battles in more compact arenas. A dynamic combat system and environmental interactions on the treacherous decks of boarded ships make for exciting and challenging battles. The roguelite approach allows for shorter or longer raids, unlocking content or just focusing on the (addictively fun!) battles.
If commanding sea monsters, exploring a fantasy world devastated by an ancient curse and battling through ships, forts, islands and more sounds fun, we would be honored if you joined us in Rogue Waters.
The game is also on sale for 20% through Monday Oct 7th.
An update on what’s coming Agents, now that the dust has settled around the back-to-school update it’s time to look a bit to the future and talk about our development priorities.
First of all, we want to confirm that we are indeed working on Catalog 5 which we plan on releasing in October. The new season will be different from previous ones in a few key areas that we want to describe here (as much as we can without too many spoilers).
Catalog 5 will not feature a new agent, but a duo of existing Agents in the leading roles. How are we using the dev bandwidth that previously went into a new character?
We will be reworking entire abilities for certain Agents to make them more fun and fairer, and improve their gameplay. These are not simple balance tweaks, but changes that transform how they are played and make their kit more unique. We’ll share more details in the coming month on who’s getting what changes.
But that’s not all! We’ll also be introducing new additions to the gadget roster for the first time since launch, expanding build-making and giving more tools to bamboozle rivals in new creative ways.
On the map front, Catalog 5 will see the introduction of map variants to bring more variety to the experience. We’ll introduce two new map variants bringing an entirely new flavor to Fragrant shore and Hard Sell. These variants will be part of the matchmaking rotation in addition to the existing version of maps to expand diversity from match to match.
There is more coming with catalog 5, and we’ll be sharing these additions with you soon, but for now, we simply wanted to set expectations on what we are working on and confirm that Catalog 5 is indeed happening for those who were wondering.
Thank you all for your support and see you on the field!
Back To School Hotfix Is Now Live!
Back To School Hotpatch Agents, we are rolling out a hotpatch to address top issues around the back to school update. This will require a client update which should be up for download when you get to read this.
General Guard Behavior Tweaks We are making more changes to overall guard behaviors to better fit their return to being able to shoot at heat level 0.
We are changing how guards follow their target and how closely they will tail players to give a better chance of escaping them and more overall playspace without having guards in your face. We are continuing to look into guard behavior to improve the experience in future patches, but this should help make them more manageable.
Bug Fixes General
Fixed a large amount of issues caused by NPCs being dormant for optimization purposes. This had led to some “Ghost NPCS” that could not be shot amongst other symptoms.
Fixed an issue where holding melee, releasing it, and holding it again could make your agent's hands disappear.
Pencil (Rainbow) Ink is now localized in other languages.
Gadgets
Umbrella shields no longer interact to prevent a wide array of situations that make it a nuisance depending on its placement.
Agents Chavez
Tweaks were made to the Duke shooting animation to make it look off-center for a shorter time, making tracking shots easier.
Hans
Similarly to Chavez, all of Hans’ weapons have received some animation tweaks in ADS to make follow-up shots easier to track.
Madame Xiu
Fixed an issue that could lead to Madame Xiu getting catapulted across the map when using her expertise ability in some specific circumstances.
Fixed an issue that got Madame Xiu a double location when pinging when she disabled the last vault terminal herself.
Sasori
Fixed an issue with the auto-fire setting leading to Hyo & Hanei being able to charge a large amount of kunai at once.
Yu-Mi
Fixed an issue where Yu-Mi’s Expertise would sometimes not recover. Note: Our original fix on this was sadly only partial, limiting some instances where it could happen but not all. This one is a more robust fix.
Fixed a visual seam on Yu-Mi’s school girl outfit around her armpit.
Map Training Range
Removed the looming gray cube.
Diamond Spire
Diamond Spire sound occlusion fixes to make it far more reliable across the level.
Fragrant Shore
Fixed as spawn under the dock stairs, trapping players.
Sound Eclipse
Fixed an issue that led to a missing gray field upgrade chests in some matches.
Fixed a very rare possible spawn that would lead to players starting in a staff room.
Fixed collisions in the new vault area that were not accurate.
Fixed some of the central pit assets that looked crusty from a texture perspective.
Back to School Update Hotfix Incoming!
Updated Message: Known Issues Update Agents,
We wanted to provide an update on previously discussed known issues. We unfortunately discovered that the Yu-Mi issue cannot be resolved via a server side update and will unfortunately require a client side update.
Our plan now is to roll out a client update for PC today which will contain the Yu-Mi fix as well as the settings issue fix. Since console updating is a more involved process, this update will be available for our console players early next week. The client update will not cause any crossplay issues in the meantime. Thank you for your continued patience and support.
See you all on the field!
Original Message: Known Issues Agents,
Before we go into the weekend, we wanted to quickly acknowledge two of the top issues we are prioritizing right now:
Yu-Mi Expertise First of all, we are currently working on a live update fix for issues with Yu-Mi’s expertise cooldown not coming back after a use. We have a fix for this issue and are currently working on getting it live through a server update later today. This will not require any download from users.
Setting Values Issues We are aware of an issue where some users are stuck with 200 as a value on some number based settings. We have identified the cause and this will affect all users with systems that use a langage with a comma as a decimal separator in numbers. We are working on a fix for this ASAP for a roll out with a hotpatch.
While not ideal, setting your system to English in the meantime will serve as a band-aid fix for the issue.
We are still gathering information on more issues we’ll tackle for the hotpatch and we already have fixes for some pre-existing issues we plan on including in it too. Stay tuned for more details.
Thank you and see you all on the field!
Deceive Inc.: Back To School Update Is Now Live!
Back To School Update Agents,
While summer is nearing its end and the summer splash event is riding off into the sunset, we have a new update dropping to keep the good times rolling. We are putting a major focus on the suspicion system, but we are also rolling many more changes to a wide selection of game systems and adding some new cosmetic items to sweeten the deal.
Let’s dive into it!
General Suspicion Continued A major point of focus for us has been pouring over feedback around suspicion and charting a course for where we want to take the feature. We’ve got some major leaps forward in this update that will truly help reach the intent we have for suspicion, not as a substitute for a stamina bar, but as a unique mechanic based around stealth and how you behave around people.
Feel Seen Suspicion no longer rises if there is nobody around to find you suspicious. You will see a new “Suspicious Eye” feedback near the player portrait telling you you are currently within a character’s line of sight and will generate suspicion if you run or jump.
Jumping Jump now gives suspicion at a rate of 20% of your bar. This ties into the previous point where it only contributes to suspicion if someone sees you doing it.
Additionally, suspicion will no longer build continuously when jumping from a running start. The suspicion bar will simply stay at its current level without decreasing instead of rising the entire time.
Playing the part We have added a feedback on the player portrait telling you if your npc is scared or aggro-ed with the help of a little “emoji”. When in this state, suspicion gain is stopped, allowing you to run away (or into) a fight without any build up. We want to encourage bold plays using the cover system and we think this is a great step in this direction. NPC behavior adjustment We have added a new NPC behavior based on the time it takes for suspicion to fill up where they will stop running to walk and fake a player recovering from high suspicion. This behavior is assigned to npcs based on their internal suspicion factor making them more or less likely to behave like a player.
Vault Terminal Delay We are adding something new to give back some of the advantage to players disabling a vault terminal. When you disable a terminal, you will still get XP and your field upgrade immediately, but a 15 seconds timer will start before the terminal is entirely unlocked. This is not known to anyone in the match until the timer is complete, giving a window of time where you are the only player in the match having this information.
With this information, we hope to give players that move the gameflow forward the initiative.
Guards Changes We have big changes to guard this update. Melee only behavior is no more, guards will now be back to having ranged behavior even at heat 0. To compensate for this, we reduced their accuracy at lower heat levels and made it scale more heavily until it reached the same level it was before at heat level 3. We have also tweaked their range at lower heat level and added danger occlusion to doors, limiting the amount of guards summoned in adjacent rooms through gunshot sounds.
Finally, we have reduced guard and elite guards' base weapon damage to reflect the reality that they will now shoot more early in a fight.
All this together should hopefully make them much more tolerable and make the overall game experience far more pleasant when they get involved.
Network Performance Update We have continued performance overhauls to how we handle items on the server, lowering potential stutters and overly high server use for smoother matches.
Retinal Scanner We are making some adjustments around the retinal scanner based on the feedback we’ve received since their rollout.
Retinal scanners do not share their intel cost with the entire match anymore, only you and your team. Getting your hard work stolen has come across as a bit too punishing for using them.
Retinal scanners no longer cause a danger event when activated that would alert guards to the position.
Another aspect we’ll be watching closely from this patch on is how well scanners fare outside of the summer splash event when less VIPS are roaming around.
Controller Aim-Assist Upgrade The new Aim Assist system ditches the physics-based approach and returns to character data selecting relevant bones to produce a simplified skeleton of the target using line segments.
Segments have a priority value and the Aim Assist tries to guide the player’s input to steer towards higher priority segments while allowing free movement along the segments of same or higher value
New Store Items We have a new selection of “back to school” themed items dropping into the store including skins, intro poses and inks! Sound Eclipse Vault Update The deeper part of Eclipse's vault is getting a touch up with this update. Our goals with theses changes are numerous:
Create a more distinct identity to the purple room deeper in the vault, making them more interesting to navigate and easier to recognize.
Make the central part of the “engineering” area more interesting to fight and hide in with plenty more social interactions and more visual cover.
Reduce the labyrinthic feeling with paths that are more straightforward and less winding staircases leading to the objective room.
With all these changes, we think Sound Eclipse’s deeper vault is a more interesting area to play in with more opportunities to experience what makes Deceive Inc. fun. We hope you like it!
Fragrant Shore B Terminal Upgrade The B terminal purple room has received a major visual upgrade as well as an all-new shortcut giving more options on how players want to leave the area or take fights in it.
Our next focus for Fragrant will be an update to terminal C location, to make it more interesting, but we need a bit more time to get this right, so stay tuned!
Balance Agent
Ace For Ace, we are enforcing the precision identity of the king a bit more strongly than before. With this change a charged body shot on an in-cover spy followed by a body shot will no longer be a kill.
Weapon 3: King of Diamond
Body shot damage 45 => 40
Body shot damage with charged passive 57 => 50
Larcin Silence is a bit too versatile right now and we want to make its identity as a reliable close range weapon more defined. Weapon Weapon 1: Silence
Fire rate 5.25 => 5
Damage falloff starts at 15m => 10m
Madame Xiu We are making some further changes on how Mamba’s Hunch functions to better fit with the new delay on vault terminals. Passive Passive 3: Mamba’s Hunch
If Xiu or her team disables a Vault Terminal, she gets the ping on other players' location immediately. Rivals are not notified when this use case happens.
If a rival disables the vault terminal, it will give the ping once the rest of the match gets the notification (15 seconds after the disabling.).
Octo Nautilo has been very "do or die" being extremely lacking if caught off guard without a charged shot. We are making a couple of changes to make the hipfire mode feel more reliable and reduce the time it takes to build up to a comfortable pace. Weapon Weapon 2: Nautilo
Starting Fire Rate: 2 => 3
Increaser Per shot: 3% => .55%
Constant Shots before Overheat: 34=> 40
Time to reach max curve: 2.5s=> 2.25s
Max Rate of Fire: x5 (10) => x4 (12)
Overheat Duration 4s => 3.1s
Sasori With the coated weaponry, Yuki & Hikari has become a sight to behold. The major crux of the issue was that Sasori was accumulating more max damage than originally intended. We planned to have Sasori max out at 3 status effects, but he was able to augment his damage with a 4th effect, making him extremely strong in team scenarios that would play around this.
This nerf aims to keep this weapon very potent with status effects, but cap out the max damage to a more acceptable level that limits instant melts.
Weapon Weapon 3: Yuki & Hikari
Projectile damage 7 => 6
Maximum Status effects stack 4x Damage (28 Per shot) => 3x Damage (18 per shot)
Gadgets Umbrella Shield
Added a visual distinction between allied and enemy shields to help clarify in team fights.
Bug Fixes General
Fixed an issue where your weapon/arm could disappear after using a healing vial.
Plugged in some never before used Voice lines on some agents, notably on Larcin’s passive uses.
Extraction confusion achievement now works correctly with the spyglass.
Fixed an issue where the ping voice line would not play on single pings.
You can now move while navigating the ping wheel.
Extraction music now plays a different version correctly for the carrier and their team.
Fixed an issue where guards could still enter toilet stalls in sound eclipse when aggroed.
Fixed an issue where spectating a player using the drone would break the information shown on screen.
Fixed an issue where navmode would cancel some unintended expertises.
Maps Hard Sell
Lasers in the objective room no longer block projectiles and are destroyed properly when the extraction phase starts.
Fragrant Shore
Fixed a player spawn point inside some stairs.
Agents Ace
Fixed an issue where Ace’s expertise activation timer was not visible.
Hans
Tone down the visual intensity of multiple visual FX.
Hans passives can no longer blow cover through walls.
Larcin
Throwing your weapon now has appropriate vibrations on the controller.
Octo
Fixed an issue where Nautilos charged shot could damage players through walls with the AOE.
Auto-Fire hold settings now work correctly with Pulpo’s ads shots.
Red
Fixed a bug where her expertise 2 would sometimes heal allies for much HP than intended.
Yu-Mi
Fixed an issue where Yu-Mi’s expertise status effects could stay stuck on victims.
Gadgets
Fixed an issue where the umbrella shield would not play its destruction visual effect when broken.
Known Issues
When using the "retinal scanner" in teams, your team will see the needed intel amount visually (and visually only) drop incorrectly by 20, instead of the correct amount of 10 as terminals are de-activated. This will correct itself as the scanner is interacted with.
Deceive Inc.: Suspicion Poll and Beyond
Agents,
With our last update we rolled out one of the most significant gameplay changes yet: Suspicion. Our intent with the rollout of this feature was clear: We wanted to roll a significant change in a basic state to gather feedback and see what the overall feeling of the community is around it.
To help us gauge this reception, we made a poll available on the subject. Today, we want to look at the results with you and talk about where suspicion is going from there. Without further ado, let's look at the tally.
How do you feel about the Suspicion Mechanic
It should be removed: 13.9%
It should remain the way it is: 13.3%
It should continue development: 72.8%
For the people that answered that it should continue development, the trends were pretty clear. (Multiple answers could be picked):
Make a wider array of actions feed into the suspicion system 78.2%
Make Suspicion build dynamic based on npc activity 71.1%
We also want to thank players that wish it would be removed for taking the time to tell us why they think so. Here are some of the overarching points coming from them:
It punishes running away from fights too much.
It feels too restrictive, fighting the sandbox appeal of the game
Too punitive for doing the last vault terminal for instance, putting you at a disadvantage for reaching the vault.
It feels very weird that it fills when no NPCs are around.
So, what’s next? As you might have guessed from the results, Suspicion is staying, but it’s also going to evolve quite a bit starting with our next update. We are actively working on major changes to all aspects to make it a more robust system overall.
Feel Seen Suspicion will no longer rise when no npc is around to see you. This will make suspicion feel more thematically appropriate but also add a whole new layer of using situations where you are not watched to move faster and slowing down when watched.
Jumping A big chunk of feedback is that more elements should feed into the system. We will be adding jumping to the suspicion system starting next update. Like running, jumping will only generate suspicion if you are watched by a NPC doing it.
Additionally, suspicion will no longer build continuously when jumping from a running start. The suspicion bar will simply stay at its current level without decreasing instead of rising the entire time.
Playing the part We want to actively reward players from playing the role of their npc correctly. To do so, we are adding a new system that will give you feedback on the state of your disguise. Players will be able to see that their NPC is currently scared or aggro-ed and will generate no suspicion during that time, allowing them to run like a npc would in this state.
This is something we want to expand further down the line to reward players fully leveraging their cover’s behavior.
Additionally, we are also working on changes to vault terminals that put the advantage more in the hands of whoever disabled them instead of being a disadvantage. While this is not directly related to suspicion, it’s meant to address the feedback we received on suspicion widening the negatives from disabling the last vault terminal.
A huge thanks to everyone that took the time to answer and give their feedback, we’ll be working hard to make suspicion a more interesting mechanic and we can’t wait to share more about our progress soon. See you all on the field!
Double XP and Octo Goes on Vacation Drops are Live Until August 12th!
By popular demand, the Octo Goes on Vacation Drops Campaign and Double Xp will be available once again from August 9th till August 12th. It's your chance to earn these exclusive items if you've missed them first time around. Watch for 15 minutes and claim the Feast (Sushi) Ink reward! Watch for 30 minutes and claim the Summer Palm Ink reward! Watch for 1 hour and claim the Convention-goer Octo Skin reward!
Deceive Inc. Suspicion System Survey
Agents,
With the release of the Summer Splash update came the Suspicion System. Now that you have all had a chance to play with it, we would like to gather your opinions on it to help inform future development!
