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.
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).
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Last call for Jatimania
The Jatimania will come to a close on Monday May 6th and we are celebrating the final weekend with a double XP boost! Please note that we will be adding the skins, inks, and intro poses unlockable for free during the event to the store at a later date for those that would like to acquire them in the future at a cost. Invest in yourself!
Jatimania Hotfix
Jatimania Hotfix Agents, we are back with a hotfix patch to address some of the bigger issues reported for the Jatimania update.
We are also rolling very focused balancing changes in this hotfix to appease some frustrating aspects around Ace and Octo. We will continue to monitor the balance and discourse around the update to target our next bigger round of balancing tweaks in the near future. For now, let’s have a look.
Player Count Update We have recently ran an experiment on player count for Solo and Duo and we turned the mic to you to give us your thoughts through a poll on the subject. The results we got were as follows:
Solo lobbies at 8 players
65.5% of responses were positive (score of 4 and 5)
20.7% of responses were neutral (score of 3)
13.8% of responses were negative (score of 1 and 2)
Duo lobbies at 10 players (5 teams)
61.7% of responses were positive (score of 4 and 5)
24.7% of responses were neutral (score of 3)
13.6% of responses were negative (score of 1 and 2)
In light of this clearly positive movement towards the change, we will be changing the player counts of both modes with the drop of the hotfix.
What’s next? With this decision taken, we can now leverage this new player count to better tweak spawn points and make sure the early game is a more pleasing experience in all maps. Having to juggle with less maximum factions enables us to curate things to a better degree than what is currently live, so expect some live balancing of spawn points that will not require an update on your side in the coming days.
General Changes Audio Occlusion Polish We have brought some more work we have done on audio occlusion which includes making sure gadgets have appropriate sound range. We are continuing to refine this aspect of the game and looking at outliers to fix in the sound department.
Keycard Printer Icon Visibility We have added a bit of verticality to the range at which you can see the icon telling you a Keycard printer is close to you. This should help with a variety of positions where a printer could be very hard to find because of differences in elevation.
Melee Targeting Tweaks We have upped the range for melee target detection to help with hitting targets on the move. Additionally, we have reduced how wide the detection radius is around the reticule to reduce instances of hitting a target that is on the side of your screen versus one that is at the center.
We are looking for other long term upgrades to the melee attack, but we hope this makes things feel better in the meantime.
Balancing Ace The amount of time Ace is able to keep pressure on a victim has been rightfully highlighted as extremely oppressive in the current meta. To address this, we are reducing both the window in which she can apply her status effect after damage and the duration of the status itself.
Base Expertise: Queen’s Gaze
Trace duration 25s =>15s
Last Target duration 30s => 20s
Expertise Mod 1: Stacked Odds
Vulnerable duration 15s =>10s
Last Target duration 30s => 20s
Octo The lingering effect when leaving Octo’s field of vision with the “Make’em Fold” ability has been highlighted as feeling bad on the receiving end, giving a feeling of lag.
This change should also make the effect more reliable when a target leaves the field of vision and comes back to re-apply it immediately.
Expertise Mod 2: Make’em Fold
Removed the lingering effect after a player left Octo’s field of view. The effect will now disappear instantly when outside.
Bug Fixes General
Fixed an issue with the aim-assist strength setting that would make it also lower input strength. This setting should now behave correctly.
Fixed multiple spawn points where keycards could appear invisible because of clipping.
Fixed the extraction car clipping in the snack bar in Fragrant Shore when landing.
Agents Larcin
Larcin throwing his weapon will now break his cover.
Fixed an issue where Larcin could throw his weapon while immaterial in the grande finale zone.
Madame Xiu
Fixed an issue where Madame Xiu could start her expertise when already considered dead on the server side.
Fixed an issue where Madame Xiu could be stuck in her expertise stance when revived in teams.
Octo
Fixed an issue that would cause Octo’s projectile with the Nautilo to deal the wrong value if charging another shot.
Red
Fixed an issue that allowed Red to use lovebomb infinitely by meleeing at the right time.
Sasori
Sasori will no longer get stuck in a no weapon state if he tries to melee while using Noxious Gas.
Coated weaponry sound impacts will now occlude correctly.
Gadgets Umbrella Shield
The handheld shield will no longer protect in directions the player is not looking at while undercover.
The shield will no longer trigger the heartbroken status effect in many situations when charmed by Red.
Jatimania Is Here!
JATIMANIA Patch notes Agents, can you feel it? It’s in the air, on the walls, even Deceive Inc HQ could not avoid it. Jatimania is here, a whole new live event with free rewards to earn featuring everyone's favorite (?!) VIP.
But that’s not all! Jatimania also brings several requested improvements to the game as we continue our initiative to overhaul the title with a special focus on stealth, sound and npc behavior. Let’s dive in!
Live Experiment Solo and Duo Player Count Back at the launch of catalog 3, we ran several player count experiments for solo lobby team sizes. While we got some valuable feedback from the experiment, the fact we were deep reworking core systems for operation overhaul and the wide array of player counts we tried meant that it was pretty hard to measure how positive the impact was on the experience.
We feel we are in a much better spot to gate the impact of this now so we would like to run a new experiment affecting two modes. For the launch weekend solo and duo will get the following tests:
Solo lobbies will be changed to 8 players per lobby.
Duo lobbies will be changed to 5 teams per lobby (10 players).
With a single value per mode, we will be better able to gauge how positive this is on the experience for the community and see if this is a desirable result going forward.
General Changes Jatimania Live Event In a devious bid for world domination, Jati Bin Teh unleashed a new line of collectible items using cutting edge hypnotic technology to compel the general public to buy them in mass. Your mission is simple: Find these collectibles, requisition them and bring them back home for analysis. DI’s research team is working around the clock to find a way to reverse the effect and end ...THE JATIMANIA.
Jati World Tour To promote his new line of collectibles, Jati is headed to every location as an additional VIP. From Garcia’s mansion to outer space, nothing stops this man from self-promoting.
What about Diamond Spire you might ask? There are now TWO JATI in Diamond Spire. Don’t ask how he pulled it off.
Free Rewards Collect posters and bobbleheads to gain event points and unlock 10 levels of Jati themed goodness including avatars, titles, inks and a skin for EVERY agent.
It's time to invest in yourself, to become a Dreampreneur.
NPC behavior overhaul There is quite a bit of new on how NPC operate this update, so let’s go through the new systems:
Item Awareness You probably had a moment in the past where a NPC would stop near an intel and looked very suspicious. Are they hacking? Is it a player? These moments are fun, but they used to happen purely by random, a NPC deciding to walk there with no rhyme or reason.
This is no longer the case. NPC can now know where we spawn items and NPC with a high internal “Suspicious” rating will hang around them within interacting distance to better approximate a player’s behavior and blur the line further.
Running Ratio based on gameflow How much NPC run overall will now be affected by the current state of the game. Running will be more rare in the early game and much more present in the extract for example, scaling as the action ramps up to fit the pace of the game.
Reaction to danger zones The fear effect on NPC is dictated by what we call danger zones. A danger zone is generated around the shooter and where the shot lands. In the past, these zones were both the same side and would not account for occlusion by walls or floors. This could lead to afraid npc giving away a fight from very far, causing more third parties.
Now, we support different danger zone sizes and we can occlude the danger using the same flag we use for sound occlusion, making the aggro of npc more predictable and closer to what you can hear. This should limit weird situations where NPCs two floors above a fight are afraid if a bullet lands near the top of a wall below for instance.
Map Updates We are continuing our work to update maps this time with a focus on Hard Sell, Fragrant Shore and Diamond Spire.
Hardsell: New rotation points added in staff rooms around the maps and an extended terrace network on the rooftops should help make the map feel more fluid than ever. Inside the vault, new visual cover and intel setups on the upper floors will make for more engaging combat and stealth.
Fragrant Shore: A new staff room on the waterfront, a balcony to flank inside the clock tower and a bunch of new visual cover both inside and in front of the capitol helps make Fragrant feel more fresh. There is also a whole new path to reach the central room of the vault if you enter from the waterfront, giving more leeway to dodge rivals in this crucial part of the level.
Diamond Spire: Tinted glass in restricted areas now offer much more options for stealth oriented players. Staff rooms have been expanded to make them more vast and interesting to play in and a bunch of rather empty areas have received visual cover and intel locations.
UI Refresh Updates to UI across the game from menus to in-game hud to make things cleaner and more stylish. Work has also been put into making the HUD a bit less intrusive overall while keeping things clear, especially when it comes to current equipment at the right of the screen.
Aim-Assist Settings We are rolling some new aim-assist settings for controllers. You will now be able to disable aim-assist on hostile guards to keep it only on guards and adjust the strength for hipfire vs ADS.
Here’s a rundown of what they do in practice:
All targets: Spies, NPCs, gadgets. Everyone basically will get aim-assist.
Hostiles only : Guards, Out of cover spies and gadgets will get aim-assist.
Spies only: Out of cover spy only will have aim-assist applied.
Reusable Vault Printer Can now be re-used to reduce camping in the infiltration phase. Additionally, we moved some locations that were a bit too close for comfort, making it easy to camp two printers at once. We hope these changes will make the infiltration phase feel more dynamic.
Extraction Phase feedback tweaks We have adjusted the overall colors of the navmode when scanning with the briefcase to better see the contrast between rival players and the environment.
Additionally, we have tweaked the size of the UI indicator showing the location of the last briefcase ping and extended the time this ping is visible substantially.
Share XP sources in team modes As it currently stands, team modes often lead to much less XP being gained for players compared to solo matches for a wide variety of reasons. One step we are taking to alleviate this is now making sure that XP from unlocking doors and field upgrade chests will be shared to the entire team, no matter who spent it. XP cassettes, piles of bonds and purses of credits will also award their XP amount to the entire team when looted now (the credits and bonds amount will still only go to the looter though).
Additionally, we have raised the amount of XP for reviving a teammate to 100 up from 50.
We know this probably won’t entirely solve the issue, but we hope it’s a positive first step in making team matches more worth your time when looking for that sweet XP.
Balance
Expertise Match Cooldown We are reducing the amount of time players have to wait before using their expertise on match start. We hope this reduces the gap between very expertise dependent characters and less dependent ones while still keeping some form of guard rails against very quick rushes using some expertises.
Expertise charge on match start 0% => 50%
Agent hitbox tweaks We have adjusted hitboxes on some agents that were outliers in their sizes. This pass mostly targets Hans, Red (who had bigger hitboxes than needed) and Octo (who had a tighter hitbox than needed). These changes should make them more in line with the rest of the cast.
Movement Update Tweaks to movement rules with the goal of making overall controls feel more fluid.
Delay to be able to run after firing a weapon has been reduced from .75 to .25 seconds.
Maximum turn rate while running has been increased by 20 degrees, allowing controller users to run without having to keep a strict angle on their controllers.
Agents Ace We are adjusting the jack of diamond to fall within the “high caliber” profile of damage falloff , making it more potent from a distance.
Weapons Mod 1 : Jack of Diamond
Damage Falloff start at 20m => 25m
Max damage at full falloff 60% => 70%
Chavez We are adjusting the behavior of pickable gadgets to fall in line with other non-interactable objects when Chavez is invulnerable.
Expertise Base: Hard Boiled
Can no longer pick up gadgets while invulnerable
Mod 2: Return to Sender
Can no longer pick up gadgets while invulnerable
Larcin Our focus on Larcin this update is around his grande finale ability. We are making several adjustments to unwanted behaviors as well as tweaking the size to make it more of a tactical consideration in combat. Additionally, we are giving a little boost to Silence's fire rate to make it a more competitive choice with a clearer personality vs Larcin’s other options.
Weapons Base Weapon: Silence
Fire rate 4.25 => 5.25 shots per second
Expertise All
Can no longer pick up gadgets while immaterial.
Mod 1 : Grande Finale
Zone size has been reduced by about 55% to reduce mobility while inside
Can no longer use social interacts inside the zone
Octo Octo is getting a slew of adjustments to make him a more competitive pick. We have touched every weapon to make them more convenient to use as well as more reliable in a wide range of possible combat situations. We hope this makes using Octo more fun and increases his presence in matches!
Weapons Base Weapon : Pulpo
Hip Fire damage 10 => 15 per shot
ADS intel shot damage 20 => 23 per shot
Magazine size 5 => 6
Weapon Mod 1 :Nautilo
Charge time has been normalized: First charge takes .5s and every subsequent charge level now takes .65 seconds
Damage per charge level change from 10-15-20-40-60 => 10-20-30-40-50
Weapon Mod 2 :Calamari
Intel shot cost 3 => 2 intel
Reduced recoil in scope
Passive Passive Mod 2 : Jackpot
Special note: This change was actually already live but not noted in previous patch notes. It was introduced with our live balancing system around the launch of operation overhaul. We are listing it here in the spirit of transparency.
% Refund per intel spent or gained 2.5% => 1%
% chance of full refund per intel 5% => 3.5%
Madame Xiu Xiu’s Longshen was singled out as an outlier after our recoil tone down pass in Operation Overhaul. We are tweaking the animation and the recoil curve to make it less of a hindrance in combat.
Weapon Mod 1: Longshen
Reduced Recoil
Red Just like Ace, Red’s jack of heart is getting a change of damage falloff profile to give a more long range identity. We are also upping heartbreaker’s damage a bit to make it more reliable in all scenarios and to ensure it’s a bit deadlier when getting the drop on a heartbroken opponent.
Weapons Base : Heartbreaker
Damage 8 => 9
Headshot damage 11 => 12
Mod 1 : Jack of Heart
Damage Falloff start at 20m => 25m
Max damage at full falloff 60% => 70%
Sasori Sasori is getting both a much requested quality of life change and some adjustments to his kit to make him less oppressive. You will now be able to aim his sword better with the addition of a reticle when preparing a strike. On the poison front, duration has been reduced to diminish instances where poison lasts for a long time post fight. We are also toning down give and take’s bonus damage to make it less of a clear standout in Sasori’s options.
Weapons All
Reticle is now visible when aiming a sword attack.
Expertise All
Base Poison Duration 12s => 10s
Passive Mod 1: Give and take
Bonus sword damage on poison 30% => 15%
Mod 2: Down with the sickness
Poison duration 24s => 18s
Gadget Drone
Scaled up the drone to be 15% bigger than previously, with appropriate tweaks to hitbox to make it easier to hit when on the move.
Goopod
Goo Pods were hit by proxy when we nerfed slowly across the board last update. We have split their value from the base slow effect for now to allow a different balancing. Since they require more setup and are more easily avoided than other slow sources, we feel their higher slow value is warranted. We’ll keep an eye on this change to make sure this does not throw off the current balance on slow.
Slow rate 30% => 40%
Scrambler Using the scrambler will no longer pinpoint your location with a visual effect while in handheld version. Enemies will still get alerted they are within scrambler range.
Umbrella Shield The shield is still an extremely competitive pick and we are focusing our attention this time on situations where players hold it open forever while in cover in anticipation of an attack. From now on, the shield’s health will drain continuously when open in handheld mode at a rate of 2.5HP per second. This means that opening your shield when needed and gauging how long you should keep it up is now an important consideration.
Shield health will now drain slowly when open (2.5 HP per second) in handheld mode and regenerate when closed.
Tweaked visual effects to make the current damage state clearer.
Delay to shoot after opening shield now applies to charge weapons correctly.
Slight expansion of the weak point hitbox in deployed mode to help shoot it in less than ideal placements.
Bug Fixes General
Fixed an issue where guards would internally consider you heat level 1 when you were not, causing more aggression than intended.
Extended spy cache loot range to fix issues grabbing it when a lot of items are present.
Fixed a crash that could happen once a game is found before getting to agent select.
Defeat screen will no longer pop immediately when dying.
Fixed an issue where projectile weapons could shoot behind walls and other obstacles when close enough to them.
Fixed an issue where guards would actively try to enter a purple room when they should not be able to.
Fixed an issue that would lead to navmode overlay being stuck after getting eliminated.
Fixed Navmode overlay stuck on death.
Agents Ace
Fixed an issue that caused Ace’s expertise to miss when trying to apply on a NPC.
Fixed an issue that would lead to the big blind ability not highlighting out of cover spies inside.
Cavalière
Fixed an issue that prevented Cavalière from investigating field upgrade chests and lost and found boxes.
Larcin
NPC no longer look at you when invisible.
Fixed clipping issues in result screens featuring Larcin.
Octo
Fixed an issue with Nautilo’s audio making it audible from much too far away.
Fixed an issue where Octo could store a charge shot with the Nautilo.
Toned down Nautilo effect on the victim’s camera to limit the “flash” effect.
Madame Xiu
Xiu’s VIP clones can no longer open orange doors.
Sasori
Fixed an issue where getting revived inside Sasori’s bubble would leave the tooltip stuck.
Fixed an issue where Sasori would get cooldown reduction twice with his darts using down with the sickness.
Fixed an issue where kunai would not spawn if the shot was not charged.
Fixed an issue where Sasori’s poison would prevent the use of shortcuts.
Yu-Mi
Fixed Yu-Mi’s EMP destroying the umbrella shield in another player’s inventory even when not out.
Levels All Levels
Fixed multiple chairs and benches across all levels to make them sittable.
Fixed multiple instances of invisible keycards clipping in meshes.
Fixed an issue where both purple and blue keycards could spawn in the same room inside the vault.
Fixed NPC stuck spots across multiple maps
Silver Reef
Fixed a spot where players could leave the map using two bounce mats.
Sound Eclipse
Fixed some spots that would not count as part of purple rooms outside the vault.
Gadgets
Deploying the umbrella shield will no longer stop you from sprinting.
Fixed UI issue with hacktrap when placing traps in pregame lobby before the game starts.
Fixed an issue that would cause tripwire UI to persist forever when getting eliminated inside of it.
Fixed an issue where mimic could break spectator cam with many different objects.
Fixed an issue that made it difficult to place gadgets while in social interactions.
Deceive Inc. April Update WIP Changelog Brief
April Update Patch notes Just before we get ready for a release, we wanted to give you a final look at the April update.
A slew of changes are coming your way including sound occlusion, NPC behavior, aim-assist settings, map updates and more.
To top it all, we have a special surprise included in this patch that we can't wait for you to discover very soon.
In the meantime, let's dive into the patch notes!
Live Experiment Solo and Duo Player Count Back at the launch of catalog 3, we ran several player count experiments for solo lobby team sizes. While we got some valuable feedback from the experiment, the fact we were deep reworking core systems for operation overhaul and the wide array of player counts we tried meant that it was pretty hard to measure how positive the impact was on the experience.
We feel we are in a much better spot to gate the impact of this now so we would like to run a new experiment affecting two modes. For the launch weekend solo and duo will get the following tests:
Solo lobbies will be changed to 8 players per lobby.
Duo lobbies will be changed to 5 teams per lobby (10 players).
With a single value per mode, we will be better able to gauge how positive this is on the experience for the community and see if this is a desirable result going forward.
General Changes REDACTED
NPC behavior overhaul There is quite a bit of new on how NPC operate this update, so let’s go through the new systems:
Item Awareness You probably had a moment in the past where a NPC would stop near an intel and looked very suspicious. Are they hacking? Is it a player? These moments are fun, but they used to happen purely by random, a NPC deciding to walk there with no rhyme or reason.
This is no longer the case. NPC can now know where we spawn items and NPC with a high internal “Suspicious” rating will hang around them within interacting distance to better approximate a player’s behavior and blur the line further.
Running Ratio based on gameflow How much NPC run overall will now be affected by the current state of the game. Running will be more rare in the early game and much more present in the extract for example, scaling as the action ramps up to fit the pace of the game.
Reaction to danger zones The fear effect on NPC is dictated by what we call danger zones. A danger zone is generated around the shooter and where the shot lands. In the past, these zones were both the same side and would not account for occlusion by walls or floors. This could lead to afraid npc giving away a fight from very far, causing more third parties.
Now, we support different danger zone sizes and we can occlude the danger using the same flag we use for sound occlusion, making the aggro of npc more predictable and closer to what you can hear. This should limit weird situations where NPCs two floors above a fight are afraid if a bullet lands near the top of a wall below for instance.
Map Updates We are continuing our work to update maps this time with a focus on Hard Sell, Fragrant Shore and Diamond Spire.
Hardsell: New rotation points added in staff rooms around the maps and an extended terrace network on the rooftops should help make the map feel more fluid than ever. Inside the vault, new visual cover and intel setups on the upper floors will make for more engaging combat and stealth.
Fragrant Shore: A new staff room on the waterfront, a balcony to flank inside the clock tower and a bunch of new visual cover both inside and in front of the capitol helps make Fragrant feel more fresh. There is also a whole new path to reach the central room of the vault if you enter from the waterfront, giving more leeway to dodge rivals in this crucial part of the level.
Diamond Spire: Tinted glass in restricted areas now offer much more options for stealth oriented players. Staff rooms have been expanded to make them more vast and interesting to play in and a bunch of rather empty areas have received visual cover and intel locations.
UI Refresh Updates to UI across the game from menus to in-game hud to make things cleaner and more stylish. Work has also been put into making the HUD a bit less intrusive overall while keeping things clear, especially when it comes to current equipment at the right of the screen.
Aim-Assist Settings We are rolling some new aim-assist settings for controllers. You will now be able to disable aim-assist on hostile guards to keep it only on guards and adjust the strength for hipfire vs ADS.
Here’s a rundown of what they do in practice:
All targets: Spies, NPCs, gadgets. Everyone basically will get aim-assist.
Hostiles only : Guards, Out of cover spies and gadgets will get aim-assist.
Spies only: Out of cover spy only will have aim-assist applied.
Reusable Vault Printer Can now be re-used to reduce camping in the infiltration phase. Additionally, we moved some locations that were a bit too close for comfort, making it easy to camp two printers at once. We hope these changes will make the infiltration phase feel more dynamic.
Extraction Phase feedback tweaks We have adjusted the overall colors of the navmode when scanning with the briefcase to better see the contrast between rival players and the environment.
Additionally, we have tweaked the size of the UI indicator showing the location of the last briefcase ping and extended the time this ping is visible substantially.
Share XP sources in team modes As it currently stands, team modes often lead to much less XP being gained for players compared to solo matches for a wide variety of reasons. One step we are taking to alleviate this is now making sure that XP from unlocking doors and field upgrade chests will be shared to the entire team, no matter who spent it. XP cassettes, piles of bonds and purses of credits will also award their XP amount to the entire team when looted now (the credits and bonds amount will still only go to the looter though).
Additionally, we have raised the amount of XP for reviving a teammate to 100 up from 50.
We know this probably won’t entirely solve the issue, but we hope it’s a positive first step in making team matches more worth your time when looking for that sweet XP.
Balance
Expertise Match Cooldown We are reducing the amount of time players have to wait before using their expertise on match start. We hope this reduces the gap between very expertise dependent characters and less dependent ones while still keeping some form of guard rails against very quick rushes using some expertises.
Expertise charge on match start 0% => 50%
Agent hitbox tweaks We have adjusted hitboxes on some agents that were outliers in their sizes. This pass mostly targets Hans, Red (who had bigger hitboxes than needed) and Octo (who had a tighter hitbox than needed). These changes should make them more in line with the rest of the cast.
Movement Update Tweaks to movement rules with the goal of making overall controls feel more fluid.
Delay to be able to run after firing a weapon has been reduced from .75 to .25 seconds.
Maximum turn rate while running has been increased by 20 degrees, allowing controller users to run without having to keep a strict angle on their controllers.
Agents Ace We are adjusting the jack of diamond to fall within the “high caliber” profile of damage falloff , making it more potent from a distance.
Weapons Mod 1 : Jack of Diamond
Damage Falloff start at 20m => 25m
Max damage at full falloff 60% => 70%
Chavez We are adjusting the behavior of pickable gadgets to fall in line with other non-interactable objects when Chavez is invulnerable.
Expertise Base: Hard Boiled
Can no longer pick up gadgets while invulnerable
Mod 2: Return to Sender
Can no longer pick up gadgets while invulnerable
Larcin Our focus on Larcin this update is around his grande finale ability. We are making several adjustments to unwanted behaviors as well as tweaking the size to make it more of a tactical consideration in combat. Additionally, we are giving a little boost to Silence's fire rate to make it a more competitive choice with a clearer personality vs Larcin’s other options.
Weapons Base Weapon: Silence
Fire rate 4.25 => 5.25 shots per second
Expertise All
Can no longer pick up gadgets while immaterial.
Mod 1 : Grande Finale
Zone size has been reduced by about 55% to reduce mobility while inside
Can no longer use social interacts inside the zone
Octo Octo is getting a slew of adjustments to make him a more competitive pick. We have touched every weapon to make them more convenient to use as well as more reliable in a wide range of possible combat situations. We hope this makes using Octo more fun and increases his presence in matches!
Weapons Base Weapon : Pulpo
Hip Fire damage 10 => 15 per shot
ADS intel shot damage 20 => 23 per shot
Magazine size 5 => 6
Weapon Mod 1 :Nautilo
Charge time has been normalized: First charge takes .5s and every subsequent charge level now takes .65 seconds
Damage per charge level change from 10-15-20-40-60 => 10-20-30-40-50
Weapon Mod 2 :Calamari
Intel shot cost 3 => 2 intel
Reduced recoil in scope
Passive Passive Mod 2 : Jackpot
Special note: This change was actually already live but not noted in previous patch notes. It was introduced with our live balancing system around the launch of operation overhaul. We are listing it here in the spirit of transparency.
% Refund per intel spent or gained 2.5% => 1%
% chance of full refund per intel 5% => 3.5%
Madame Xiu Xiu’s Longshen was singled out as an outlier after our recoil tone down pass in Operation Overhaul. We are tweaking the animation and the recoil curve to make it less of a hindrance in combat.
Weapon Mod 1: Longshen
Reduced Recoil
Red Just like Ace, Red’s jack of heart is getting a change of damage falloff profile to give a more long range identity. We are also upping heartbreaker’s damage a bit to make it more reliable in all scenarios and to ensure it’s a bit deadlier when getting the drop on a heartbroken opponent.
Weapons Base : Heartbreaker
Damage 8 => 9
Headshot damage 11 => 12
Mod 1 : Jack of Heart
Damage Falloff start at 20m => 25m
Max damage at full falloff 60% => 70%
Sasori Sasori is getting both a much requested quality of life change and some adjustments to his kit to make him less oppressive. You will now be able to aim his sword better with the addition of a reticle when preparing a strike. On the poison front, duration has been reduced to diminish instances where poison lasts for a long time post fight. We are also toning down give and take’s bonus damage to make it less of a clear standout in Sasori’s options.
Weapons All
Reticle is now visible when aiming a sword attack.
Expertise All
Base Poison Duration 12s => 10s
Passive Mod 1: Give and take
Bonus sword damage on poison 30% => 15%
Mod 2: Down with the sickness
Poison duration 24s => 18s
Gadget Drone
Scaled up the drone to be 15% bigger than previously, with appropriate tweaks to hitbox to make it easier to hit when on the move.
Goopod
Goo Pods were hit by proxy when we nerfed slowly across the board last update. We have split their value from the base slow effect for now to allow a different balancing. Since they require more setup and are more easily avoided than other slow sources, we feel their higher slow value is warranted. We’ll keep an eye on this change to make sure this does not throw off the current balance on slow.
Slow rate 30% => 40%
Scrambler Using the scrambler will no longer pinpoint your location with a visual effect while in handheld version. Enemies will still get alerted they are within scrambler range.
Umbrella Shield The shield is still an extremely competitive pick and we are focusing our attention this time on situations where players hold it open forever while in cover in anticipation of an attack. From now on, the shield’s health will drain continuously when open in handheld mode at a rate of 2.5HP per second. This means that opening your shield when needed and gauging how long you should keep it up is now an important consideration.
Shield health will now drain slowly when open (2.5 HP per second) in handheld mode and regenerate when closed.
Tweaked visual effects to make the current damage state clearer.
Delay to shoot after opening shield now applies to charge weapons correctly.
Slight expansion of the weak point hitbox in deployed mode to help shoot it in less than ideal placements.
Bug Fixes General
Fixed an issue where guards would internally consider you heat level 1 when you were not, causing more aggression than intended.
Extended spy cache loot range to fix issues grabbing it when a lot of items are present.
Fixed a crash that could happen once a game is found before getting to agent select.
Defeat screen will no longer pop immediately when dying.
Fixed an issue where projectile weapons could shoot behind walls and other obstacles when close enough to them.
Fixed an issue where guards would actively try to enter a purple room when they should not be able to.
Fixed an issue that would lead to navmode overlay being stuck after getting eliminated.
Fixed Navmode overlay stuck on death.
Agents Ace
Fixed an issue that caused Ace’s expertise to miss when trying to apply on a NPC.
Fixed an issue that would lead to the big blind ability not highlighting out of cover spies inside.
Cavalière
Fixed an issue that prevented Cavalière from investigating field upgrade chests and lost and found boxes.
Larcin
NPC no longer look at you when invisible.
Fixed clipping issues in result screens featuring Larcin.
Octo
Fixed an issue with Nautilo’s audio making it audible from much too far away.
Fixed an issue where Octo could store a charge shot with the Nautilo.
Toned down Nautilo effect on the victim’s camera to limit the “flash” effect.
Madame Xiu
Xiu’s VIP clones can no longer open orange doors.
Sasori
Fixed an issue where getting revived inside Sasori’s bubble would leave the tooltip stuck.
Fixed an issue where Sasori would get cooldown reduction twice with his darts using down with the sickness.
Fixed an issue where kunai would not spawn if the shot was not charged.
Fixed an issue where Sasori’s poison would prevent the use of shortcuts.
Yu-Mi
Fixed Yu-Mi’s EMP destroying the umbrella shield in another player’s inventory even when not out.
Levels All Levels
Fixed multiple chairs and benches across all levels to make them sittable.
Fixed multiple instances of invisible keycards clipping in meshes.
Fixed an issue where both purple and blue keycards could spawn in the same room inside the vault.
Fixed NPC stuck spots across multiple maps
Silver Reef
Fixed a spot where players could leave the map using two bounce mats.
Sound Eclipse
Fixed some spots that would not count as part of purple rooms outside the vault.
Gadgets
Deploying the umbrella shield will no longer stop you from sprinting.
Fixed UI issue with hacktrap when placing traps in pregame lobby before the game starts.
Fixed an issue that would cause tripwire UI to persist forever when getting eliminated inside of it.
Fixed an issue where mimic could break spectator cam with many different objects.
Fixed an issue that made it difficult to place gadgets while in social interactions.
April Update Map Update Brief
Agents, we are moving forward with more refresh of existing operations to bring them to a higher standard. Our focus this update has been on Hardsell, Fragrant Shore and Diamond Spire with a slew of new additions, new flank routes and expanded visual cover for more exciting engagements. We are very eager to show you what we have been working on so let’s get to it!
Hardsell: New rotation points added in staff rooms around the maps and an extended terrace network on the rooftops should help make the map feel more fluid than ever. Inside the vault, new visual cover and intel setups on the upper floors will make for more engaging combat and stealth.
Fragrant Shore: A new staff room on the waterfront, a balcony to flank inside the clock tower and a boatload of new visual cover both inside and in front of the capitol helps make Fragrant feel more fresh. There is also a whole new path to reach the central room of the vault if you enter from the waterfront, giving more leeway to dodge rivals in this crucial part of the level.
Diamond Spire: Tinted glass in restricted areas now offer much more options for stealth oriented players. Staff rooms have been expanded to make them more vast and interesting to play in and a bunch of rather empty areas have received visual cover and intel locations.
We hope you enjoy these new additions as much as we have enjoyed working on them and we are excited to have you jump in to give us your feedback to help us prioritize the next round of map updates. See you on the field agents!
April Update Preview Brief
April Update Preview Agents, before we head into the weekend and close out the month, we wanted to give you a little sneak peek into upcoming changes that will drop with our next update in April. We’ll dive into two subjects that are pretty massive in how they affect the game: Sound Occlusion and NPC Behavior.
Sound Occlusion Rework A massive rework of how we handle audio is dropping with the april update, enabling occlusion on a wide array of gameplay affecting sounds.
This affects everything from field upgrade chests being open to weapons being fired or gadgets being placed to differing degrees. For instance, you can expect to hear weapons better through walls than a chest being opened.
From a developer perspective, we now have full control on what we want to flag as “occluding” and what should not be, meaning a table in the center of the room won’t occlude a gunshot for instance, but a structural wall will.
This is something we’ll keep a close eye (and ear) on through the patch cycle to gather feedback and see how we iterate on it moving forward, but we are excited to roll this change and see how it affects your experience.
NPC behavior overhaul
There is quite a bit of new on how NPC operate this update, so let’s go through the new systems:
Item Awareness You probably had a moment in the past where a NPC would stop near an intel and looked very suspicious. Are they hacking? Is it a player? These moments are fun, but they used to happen purely by random chance, a NPC deciding to walk there with no rhyme or reason.
This is no longer the case. NPC can now know where they spawn items and NPC with a high internal “Suspicious” rating will hang around them within interacting distance to better approximate a player’s behavior and blur the line further between players and NPC.
Running Ratio based on gameflow How much NPC run overall will now be affected by the current state of the game. Running will be more rare in the early game and much more present in the extract for example, scaling as the action ramps up to fit the pace of the game.
Reaction to danger zones The fear effect on NPC is dictated by what we call danger zones. A danger zone is generated around the shooter and where the shot lands. In the past, these zones were both the same side and would not account for occlusion by walls or floors. This could lead to afraid npc giving away a fight from very far, causing more third parties.
Now, we support different danger zone sizes and we can occlude the danger using the same flag we use for sound occlusion, making the aggro of npc more predictable and closer to what you can hear. This should limit weird situations where NPCs two floors above a fight are afraid if a bullet lands near the top of a wall below for instance.
We will be unveiling more changes and additions you can expect in April very soon, including more map changes, gameplay tweaks, bug fixes and a few other surprises.
Deceive Inc. Operation Overhaul Live Update
Operation Overhaul Live Balance Update Agents, we are dropping our first live balance update for Operation Overhaul effective immediately. This requires no download from your part and will automatically take effect in-game.
Our current mindset with this update is to keep the most oppressive and unpleasant elements targeted by feedback in check while we continue parsing through feedback for larger overarching changes in the future.
With all this said, let’s have a look:
Damage Falloff Damage Falloff is one of the biggest changes to DI’s sandbox this update and as such, we are monitoring feedback, analyzing numbers and taking a deeper look at where it should go next. While we are having a larger look at the mechanic, we still wanted to make full-auto weapons more lenient in the meantime as this was highlighted by the community as the most difficult aspect of this new reality.
Changed start distance on falloff for full-auto weapons 10m => 15m
Guards Behavior We are aware of player’s frustration around the amount of guards that can quickly crowd around a duel when guards are in melee only mode. We are reducing the amount of guards actively attacking you when you have no heat to one. This should help reduce the chaos when you add this up to all participants in a fight by cutting the aggro-ed guards by half.
Max amount of actively aggro-ed guard without a heat level 2 => 1
Agents Ace Ace received a slew of changes around her passive and we noted a large amount of feedback that the charge now feels clunky because of when it starts when shooting your weapon. We’ll be looking at this in a more in-depth manner in the near future, but we wanted to give Ace players a bit more charge speed to offset this in the short term.
Weapon Queen of Diamond
Charge time shortened 1s => .65s
Jack of Diamond
Charge time shortened .45s => .3s
King of Diamond
Charge time shortened 1.3s => 1s
Chavez We received some good feedback on the fact that a tight ammo economy is not a fun gameplay lever, we are moving away from this on two weapons this update, including Chavez’s Duke by giving him a full clip per box.
Weapon Mod 2: Duke
Ammo amount gained per box raised 2 => 4
Larcin In the same spirit as Chavez’s change, we are giving a more lenient ammo economy to Larcin’s Violence to allow it to shine more as a unique option in his arsenal.
Weapon Mod 2: Violence
Ammo amount gained per box raised 4 => 8
Expertise Grande Finale continues to be a very strong tool for Larcin and his team. We are making its cooldown longer than his other options for now to make its use a bit more of a commitment in a fight, but we are looking at fixing a few issues around its potential interactions that makes it stronger than intended in the near future.
Mod 1: Grande Finale
Cooldown extended 60s => 75s
Red
The oppressiveness and strength of Red’s charm and heartbreak has been a hot topic of discussion recently. We are taking steps to make the ability less annoying to play against while making sure it’s still a useful tool in Red’s arsenal. We are also toning down the Lovebite shotgun which has been highlighted as the most destructive tool in Red’s arsenal in its current state.
Weapon Mod 2: Lovebite
Damage 40 => 37
Fire Rate 1.15 => 1.05 shots per second
Charm
Reduced Charmed duration 8s => 5s
Heartbreak
Heartbreak Duration 8s => 6s
Heartbreak additional damage now in line with vulnerable status effect 35% => 25%
Squire Squire’s javelin is in a special position with the release of Operation Overhaul. While it’s one of the weapons that is most affected by recoil in the current state of the game, it’s performing extremely strongly for anyone that can control it. We will look into making the weapon less unwieldy in the future since this is beyond the scope of a live update, but we need to calm down the speed at which it melts opponents in the meantime to level the playing field
Weapon. Mod 1: Trident
Damage 11 => 10 per bullet
Burst fire rate 10 => 9 shot per second
Headshot Damage 15 => 14
Reload Speed 2s => 2.2s
Maps Hard Sell
Fixed a close player spawn on top of the Auction Hall
Fragrant Shore
Buffed ‘drawers spawn pools’ to have items more consistently.
Fixed a keycard spawning behind a bed.
Sound Eclipse
Buffed ‘drawers spawn pools’ to have items more consistently.
Tweaked some close spawn points in the habitation section.
Deep Dive: Guards and Heat
Deep Dive: Guards and Heat
Agents, our topic this week is centered around guards, their behavior and their connection to the heat system. We’ve put a lot of effort into this update to reduce frustration from guard behavior during pvp fights and make their response more in-tune with player behavior to give you more tools to avoid a strong response from guards. Let’s have a look at how we are tackling all this in practice.
Updated Guards Behavior Guards will now scale their response depending on the heat level of the spy. Here’s how heat penalties work now and how it affects guard behavior.
No heat: Guards will aggro from less far away and will only try to take you down with melee attacks. This level is meant to interfere very little with PVP fights and allow well behaving players to not get much PVE hostility. Guards can still shoot at you if you purposefully put yourself in a situation where they can’t melee you (jumping on a desk to wait around for example).
Heat Level 1: 25% additional damage taken and guards will start shooting at you. This is close to what guards currently do on live from a behavior standpoint.
Heat Level 2: 50% increased damage taken. Guards will aggro from farther away and you will be able to aggro up to 3 guards at once instead of 2.
Heat Level 3: 75% (down from 100% previously) increased damage taken. Guard response is identical to heat level 2 with the added downside of taking even more damage from their shots because of the additional vulnerable status.
To complement this, guards have received tweaks to their melee behavior to make them far less likely to punch you from behind as well as a slight buff to their weapon damage to make heat level 1 more dangerous from a PVE perspective.
Additionally, after a short grace period, aggro-ed guard will start building up your heat level over time, incentivizing players to cut line of sight and get back into cover. This means that standing in front of heat level 0 guards while juking them for a long time will eventually lead to heat level 1 popping up.
Heat Gained Buffer Finally, the buffer to gain no heat after hitting a spy has been made longer and we also added a buffer on passive heat gained from aggro to not trigger if you gained heat actively from hitting a npc recently. This prevents the player from gaining double the heat from a single attack on a guard. The idea is that heat should not act as an accuracy check during a fight, we should be more lenient if a lost shot hits a npc while fighting other players.
The intent behind all of this is to reduce chaos in the average fight by making guards respond to something that scales with player action. If a spy plays in a very clean manner, they can expect guards to be less of a threat than before, players that gather a lot of heat will find the response much more daunting than before.
One more thing we want to make clear, is that these changes that are coming with Phase 1 of Operation Overhaul are just the start! The team is continuing to work on new systems and changes to the existing ones to help enhance Agents ability to successfully play more stealthily and enjoy more opportunities for tricks and mischief.
Some of these systems are already in test internally, but need more time to iterate on, while others are still more conceptual as a result of feedback from players and internal testing. We’ll be sharing more on these as development progress continues, so stay tuned!
Deep Dive: Map Updates
Agents, this week we’ll be showing you what kind of changes you can expect to see in maps when Operation Overhaul hits the live servers. We have learned a great deal about what makes for a good map in Deceive Inc. over the past year, and we aim to go back to our existing operations and make them better by improving the flow of combat, navigation and giving players more options.
Our focus for this patch was very much on Diamond Spire, but we have new elements for every single operation to keep things interesting. Let’s dive into some of these updates. Please keep in mind, we are still working on these changes and some of these screenshots might not be entirely representative once these changes are in your hands. That being said, let’s have a look!
Hard Sell For Hard Sell, our focus has been into making the vault area more interesting with new flank routes in bathrooms and new visual cover for fights taking place in the entrances.
Silver Reef Silver Reef is getting a substantial update once again, this time both in and outside the vault. The central bridge on the first floor has been removed to better control player flow around the map and reduce the amount of third party situations. A new staircase has been added on the vault side of the map to promote better interactions moving between floors.
On the vault front, a new vault entrance has been added near the aquarium area and additional flank routes have been added in the form of a new cargo area underneath the main terminal allowing cheeky dodges while using the briefcase.
[IMG]https://media.tripwirecdn.com/020924/SR3.png
Diamond Spire Diamond Spire is getting a massive update with the main goal of reducing rooms without exits and smoother flow both in fights and in escape situations. Outside the vault, new scaffoldings have been added to create high profile escape options on both sides of the map.
The main hall also received new visual cover on all bridges and an opened up passage in the main lobby helicopter terminal that allows direct access to the vault door.
Inside the vault, two new restrooms have been added (when you gotta go, you gotta go!) to give more free flowing options between the three main corridors and reduce pressure on the formerly only restroom.
Finally, the rooftop has been updated to add both a restroom and a staff room, making it a fully fledged floor in its own right with better looting and healing opportunities.
[B]Fragrant Shore[/B] Fragrant is getting a smaller, mostly visual update, with some areas being reworked to be more visually distinct and new unique signs added to all storefronts in an effort to help player callouts and make location easier to distinguish.
Sound Eclipse The lower part of the central hall now has stairs on both sides to allow better flow and prevent situations where players get trapped in a dead-end in an encounter. A new staff room has also been added to make the central hall a more appealing location and give it a natural flow from public, staff to guard room without having to change area.
We hope you enjoyed this look at the level art team’s work and we are very excited for you to have a look around and find everything new added to our maps!
