Operation Sound Eclipse Brief Agents, the rumors are true, Deceive Inc. is sending you on an all-new mission for season 3. Fasten your seatbelts and tune your watches: we are going to SPACE, previously believed by some to beyond the reaches of greed and corruption.
The Briefing: Location: Valkyrie-V Station, Earth’s orbit Hazen, famous singer, artist and writer, is finally ready to unveil their newest performance: AGE OF DARKNESS, an opera that will revolutionize performance art forever.
The venue: The Valkyrie, the world’s first luxury space station for the rich and famous.
The catch? Hazen’s performance is a cover to unleash a powerful EMP device from space. Hazen, a true artist at heart, believes technology has rendered humanity incapable of creativity. The Valkyrie Comet, to them, is the ultimate sign of the decadence that technology has brought. If Hazen is not stopped, the highest note in their show will trigger the device, sending humanity’s technology back to the dark age. A veritable… sound eclipse, if you will.
To infiltrate the Valkyrie, you’ll need some intel on its layout, so let’s dig into the main sections of Sound Eclipse.
The Main Hall In the center of it all lies the Main Hall: A two-story marvel of architecture with open sightlines and smaller closed-off corridors on its side. Be very careful as you travel this area, it’s open nature means that rival spies could spot you from far away.
The Galleria The center of consumerism aboard the Valkyrie, the galleria has it all: Shops, Spa, Restaurants, Karaoke, even a Jati-certified gym. With its vertical design on 3 floors, it offers plenty of opportunities to loot and lose your pursuers.
The habitation section Featuring an artificial park, the habitation section is both an open exterior area and a hotel with smaller rooms to loot. With plenty of variety in its sightlines and opportunities, it’s a prime destination for spies in need of intel.
The Back-stage Behind the closed doors of the opera hall lies a complex of high-tech machinery and nefarious devices. It’s deep inside this facility that spies will find the EMP device core... and steal it.
We hope you enjoyed this sneak peek at your next assignment agents. We can’t wait to deploy you on Operation Sound Eclipse when season 3 launches!
October Field Conditions Brief
Agents,
It is time for you to start being read in on all the latest operational changes heading your way later this month. To start:
A new agent is joining your ranks! You may have already seen some of their handy work in the field. While their full motives aren’t yet known, the company has arranged for this talented individual to put their talents to use for Deceive Inc. after contact was made.
We’ll be sharing more on this new agent in the days ahead, but we wanted to take this opportunity to brief you on some changes in the field:
Private Lobbies Private Lobbies will be officially added for all players, allowing for agents to group up with their friends and drop into an operation together in solo, duos or trios. This is only the beginning and thanks to player feedback from last month's beta, the team is already looking at how we can add in some of the top requested features and tweaks.
Audio Occlusion Changes We’ve made changes to how weapon sounds propagate in maps to make obstructions a bigger factor. In this update, walls and other obstructions will have a bigger effect on blocking sound while open areas will keep sounds propagating from far away. We hope this makes picking fights in closed off rooms safer and more of a strategic consideration.
Room Weighting Overhaul A driving factor on how NPCs navigate a map is based on “weights” attributed to room. In this update, a major overhaul of restricted areas weight has been made across the entire game.
This now means that all guard rooms have a balanced weight to not skew certain rooms to have much higher guard traffic than others, making some rooms more desirable to sneak into without a costume early on. This is a subtle change on the surface that should result in a better balanced experience overall.
NPC Vision arc tweak NPCs are getting a vision upgrade with this update. What that means is that the side of NPCs will be less of a deadzone for them to spot you at various angles. We were very careful to tweak this in a way that still allows players to sneak behind NPCs but standing right next to one on their side will result in them noticing you now.
NPC Scolding behavior overhaul Previously, when a NPC spotted a player with the wrong disguise from far away, they would walk slowly to them to scold them. This meant that players could easily run through large restricted areas with very little risk of npc catching up to them. Now, aggro-ed NPCs that are far away will run toward the player to scold them.
We also think this behavior makes more sense for a player trying to emulate a NPC and spotting someone with the wrong disguise from afar which should help blur the line more.
Xiu’s Return To Greatness The madame has been a figure of much discussion about her viability due to some ongoing issues. She wanted us to pass along the following: “Only a fool would count me out”. Xiu has been the focus of our first “Targeted Agent Sweep” where the team really dug into some of the legacy issues that have built up and worked on getting them fixed while addressing balance around the character as well.
Other agents will also see improvements with work having begun on Red that will be reflected in the upcoming update as well as increased reliability of Hans active.
Keep your eyes tuned as more briefs will be headed your way agents, covering more detail, new information, and additional balance updates and QoL improvements/fixes for agents!
Weekend 2XP & Solo Lobby Size Experiment Brief
Agents,
For a limited time, during this weekend’s Double XP event (which runs from: Sept 29th @ 11 AM EST - Oct 2nd @ 11 AM EST), we will be experimenting with lobby sizes for Solo matchmaking. During this time period, Solo lobby size will be temporarily lowered from 10 to 7 players max.
The team is testing to see how this change impacts the gameflow and feel and would love to hear your thoughts around the following areas with the change enacted:
Early game combat
3rd partying
Chance at victory
Please be sure to let us know your feedback (on either Discord or the Official Forums Poll & Feedback thread) on how you feel this experiment is working. It would be helpful to note if you noticed any difference and If so, did it feel like a positive or negative gameplay experience. Thank you in advance agents!
You and your fellow agents will have until this Friday (September 29th) at 11 AM EST to continue testing! At that point the beta will be going away to give the team time to work on finishing the system up for its official debut. Also headed your way this weekend will be another double XP event!
As always, we look forward to your continued feedback!
Balance Update 1.07.04 with the Private Lobbies Beta Is Now Live
Private Lobby Beta patch notes Agents, the private lobby beta is here! After a lot of hard work to get things in a playable state, we are finally ready to open the gate to monitor how things go and better plan our next step for the full release of private lobbies. While this beta is the main focus of the update, we have wedged a few other elements in here from bug fixes to targeted balancing tweaks. Let’s get into it.
To join the Beta:
Right click on Deceive Inc. in your game library.
Choose “properties”
Head into the “Betas” tab
Change “Beta Participation” from “None” to “Private_Lobby_Beta”
When starting the game choose “Play Private Lobby Beta” in the pop-up window
In the in-game menu, to choose game mode you should now see “Private Lobbies” on the right side
Once inside, simply invite the friends you would want to play with!
Please note that choosing the “Play Deceive Inc.” option will allow you to play the game normally without switching out of the beta branch!
Everyone with a Steam version of the game will be able to host a private lobby, everyone else will be able to join a private lobby when receiving an invite.
Private Lobby Beta patch notes After a lot of hard work to get things in a playable state, we are almost ready to open the gate to monitor how things go and better plan our next step for the full release of private lobbies. While this beta is the main focus of the update, we have wedged a few other elements in here from bug fixes to targeted balancing tweaks. Let’s get into it.
The instructions on how to partake in the beta on steam will be added in detail in the final patch notes.
Everyone with a Steam version of the game will be able to host a private lobby, everyone else will be able to join a private lobby when receiving an invite.
General
Private Lobbies BETA Ever since our early alphas, the top feedback we kept receiving on all fronts was the desire to be able to host private lobbies with your friends. While our team was always extremely excited at the prospect of offering them, the task was far from easy and required quite a bit of work in the background. We are happy to announce that we are now ready to see you jump in as we monitor how things go for final adjustment before the full release of private lobbies. We expect some bugs and issues once it’s in the wild, but we are excited to see how things go.
As a reminder, this is only the beginning for private lobbies. More features are expected to come over time!
Here’s what you need to know about private lobbies in this Beta:
Ability to play on private lobbies with up to 12 players
Ability to choose server region to choose the best fit for your lobby
Ability to choose between solo, duo, and trio
Ability for the Host to choose teams manually or randomize them
Ability to choose the operation of your choice
Notes on progression vs private lobbies:
EXP gains are limited to 50% of normal XP
Bonds and Credits purse will not spawn in private lobbies
XP boosters will be consumed in private lobbies. This is something we will address for the full release (so that boosters will not be consumed) but please be advised for the beta!
Private Lobbies (BETA) Known issues
If players do not find a match (matchmaking fails) there will not be any messaging to notify them as such. This will be fixed in a future update
When a private lobby leader cancels a search for a server, the rest of the members in the lobby will sometimes continue searching
If the leader leaves a match, they can start a new match while other players are still in the existing match. This will bring players to the new match from the currently still running existing match
There’s currently no audio feedback when navigating around the private lobby menu
Dropdown menu for team selection sometimes closes prematurely - If it could scream “Fight Me” it likely would, but see the fourth known issue
The play button is accessible to private lobby players at the end of a match
The Private Party leader crown icon is not in this beta
Some text is not localized
Shop Rework We’ve been adamant since day one that we did not want to prey on player’s fear of missing out when it comes to our cosmetics offering. The way our shop has been setup was not well suited to such a mission, forcing you to wait through a full rotation to get the skin you are interested in was not ideal. As we look to expand the selection of the shop in the future, we are launching a rework that entirely removes the time based aspect of rotations. Players now have access to every single shop item at any time through the different pages.
Cover Swap VFX tweaks The visible VFX when someone swaps cover has been made a bit faster and a bit less overt to allow more cover swap with less danger for players overall.
Agents Larcin Small update specifically on Cadence. We’ve heard the feedback and seen the analytics showing that Cadence is currently performing too well compared to other options on Larcin. While we felt that the reduced damage heavily diluted it’s identity as a “long range” option, it’s clear that putting it back up made the weapon too strong again.
We are trying with this to keep the “long range” damage identity while reducing other aspects of the weapon to make it less versatile when missing shots or having to reload mid-fight.
Weapon Mod 1: Cadence
Mag size 14=>12
Reload time 1.25s=>1.4s
Delay between bursts .375s => .425s
Gadgets Umbrella Shield We’ve seen the evolution of the “ shield tech” ever since we added the weak points on the deployable shield. The in-hand version of the shield is now the way to go to quick swap leading to frustrating encounters. We are adding a small delay when swapping back to a weapon from an open shield before you can fire again and reducing in-hand shield health a bit to make it less of an oppressive tool in highly-skilled hands. We’ll keep monitoring the situation after these changes hit live.
In-Hand Shield health 75 => 50
Delay added before being able to shoot after swap .35s
Bug Fixes General
Tweaked toggle run behavior to be more pleasant on controller
Fixed an issue that led to the Umbrella shield to appear still active when destroyed from far away
Fixed an issue that prevented the achievement “social of solace” from being unlocked
Fixed an issue that lead to inks not appearing for other players sometimes
Level Fragrant shore
Fixed the vault terminal alarm not sounding off inside the fort’s basement purple room
Agents Chavez
Fixed an issue that led to “return to sender” sound effects persisting infinitely if Chavez was eliminated during the effect
Madame Xiu
Fixed an issue that allowed Xiu to use her expertise twice when swapping tools quickly
Sasori
Fixed an issue with “Noxious Gas” that would cancel the expertise when swapping tools
Fixed an issue that led to Sasori’s clouds appearing green for both allies and enemies
Yu-Mi
Fixed an issue that would lead to energy catalyst not refunding cooldown when destroying a shield through the weak spot
Please be sure to let us know if you encounter any issues during this beta by leaving a bug report in the official forums or Discord, and be sure to join the conversation about how you would like Private Lobbies to grow in the future!
Private Lobbies Beta Preview Brief
With the "Private Lobby Beta” update expected in the coming days, we wanted to read you in on what changes are headed your way. Please keep in mind that this is a Work In Progress changelog and things are subject to change (items may also be removed or added) before the final release.
Private Lobby Beta patch notes After a lot of hard work to get things in a playable state, we are almost ready to open the gate to monitor how things go and better plan our next step for the full release of private lobbies. While this beta is the main focus of the update, we have wedged a few other elements in here from bug fixes to targeted balancing tweaks. Let’s get into it.
The instructions on how to partake in the beta on steam will be added in detail in the final patch notes.
Everyone with a Steam version of the game will be able to host a private lobby, everyone else will be able to join a private lobby when receiving an invite.
General
Private Lobbies BETA Ever since our early alphas, the top feedback we kept receiving on all fronts was the desire to be able to host private lobbies with your friends. While our team was always extremely excited at the prospect of offering them, the task was far from easy and required quite a bit of work in the background. We are happy to announce that we are now ready to see you jump in as we monitor how things go for final adjustment before the full release of private lobbies. We expect some bugs and issues once it’s in the wild, but we are excited to see how things go.
As a reminder, this is only the beginning for private lobbies. More features are expected to come over time!
Here’s what you need to know about private lobbies in this Beta:
Ability to play on private lobbies with up to 12 players
Ability to choose server region to choose the best fit for your lobby
Ability to choose between solo, duo, and trio
Ability for the Host to choose teams manually or randomize them
Ability to choose the operation of your choice
Notes on progression vs private lobbies:
EXP gains are limited to 50% of normal XP
Bonds and Credits purse will not spawn in private lobbies
XP boosters will be consumed in private lobbies. This is something we will address for the full release (so that boosters will not be consumed) but please be advised for the beta!
Private Lobbies (BETA) Known issues
There’s currently no audio feedback when navigating around the private lobby menu.
The play button is accessible to private lobby players at the end of a match
Dropdown menu for team selection sometimes closes prematurely - If it could scream “Fight Me” it likely would, but see the first known issue
The Private Party leader crown icon is not in this beta
Some text is not localized
When a player is kicked from a private lobby, they will still appear to be in the lobby and must select the “leave party” option
If the leader leaves a match, they can start a new match while other players are still in the existing match. This will bring players to the new match from the currently still running existing match
When a private lobby leader cancels a search for a server, the rest of the members in the lobby will sometimes continue searching
Shop Rework We’ve been adamant since day one that we did not want to prey on player’s fear of missing out when it comes to our cosmetics offering. The way our shop has been setup was not well suited to such a mission, forcing you to wait through a full rotation to get the skin you are interested in was not ideal. As we look to expand the selection of the shop in the future, we are launching a rework that entirely removes the time based aspect of rotations. Players now have access to every single shop item at any time through the different pages.
Cover Swap VFX tweaks The visible VFX when someone swaps cover has been made a bit faster and a bit less overt to allow more cover swap with less danger for players overall.
Agents Larcin Small update specifically on Cadence. We’ve heard the feedback and seen the analytics showing that Cadence is currently performing too well compared to other options on Larcin. While we felt that the reduced damage heavily diluted it’s identity as a “long range” option, it’s clear that putting it back up made the weapon too strong again.
We are trying with this to keep the “long range” damage identity while reducing other aspects of the weapon to make it less versatile when missing shots or having to reload mid-fight.
Weapon Mod 1: Cadence
Mag size 14=>12
Reload time 1.25s=>1.4s
Delay between bursts .375s => .425s
Gadgets Umbrella Shield We’ve seen the evolution of the “ shield tech” ever since we added the weak points on the deployable shield. The in-hand version of the shield is now the way to go to quick swap leading to frustrating encounters. We are adding a small delay when swapping back to a weapon from an open shield before you can fire again and reducing in-hand shield health a bit to make it less of an oppressive tool in highly-skilled hands. We’ll keep monitoring the situation after these changes hit live.
In-Hand Shield health 75 => 50
Delay added before being able to shoot after swap .35s
Bug Fixes General
Tweaked toggle run behavior to be more pleasant on controller
Fixed an issue that led to the Umbrella shield to appear still active when destroyed from far away
Fixed an issue that prevented the achievement “social of solace” from being unlocked
Fixed an issue that lead to inks not appearing for other players sometimes
Level Fragrant shore
Fixed the vault terminal alarm not sounding off inside the fort’s basement purple room
Agents Chavez
Fixed an issue that led to “return to sender” sound effects persisting infinitely if Chavez was eliminated during the effect
Madame Xiu
Fixed an issue that allowed Xiu to use her expertise twice when swapping tools quickly
Sasori
Fixed an issue with “Noxious Gas” that would cancel the expertise when swapping tools
Fixed an issue that led to Sasori’s clouds appearing green for both allies and enemies
Yu-Mi
Fixed an issue that would lead to energy catalyst not refunding cooldown when destroying a shield through the weak spot
Please be sure to let us know if you encounter any issues during this beta by leaving a bug report in the official forums or Discord, and be sure to join the conversation about how you would like Private Lobbies to grow in the future!
Deceive Inc. Private Lobbies Beta Brief
Private Lobbies Beta Agents, the time has finally come: let’s talk private lobbies! We are currently planning to hold a private lobbies beta, currently scheduled for late next week, to prepare for their full release next month. We want to clarify exactly what you can expect at launch and how you will be able to participate.
Before we dive into the ‘how’ and ‘when’, it’s important for us to highlight that this is only the beginning of private lobbies. Our work here is not over! We have discussed at length internally on what we believe to be the next best additions to bring to private lobbies but we also want to hear what you, the community, has to say.
Next, while the full release will be available for everyone both on PC and console, during this beta Private Lobbies hosting will be limited to Steam only. Those who wish to host via Steam will be able to access a beta branch on Steam that will allow you to be able to launch private lobbies. Everyone with the game on Steam will be able to opt in this beta branch, so do not worry about a selection process to get to try it.
Important Notes:
Players on all platforms will be able to join a hosted private lobby they are invited to during this beta (without opting into a beta build)
All players will be able to host a private lobby when this feature is fully released next month
We will give full details on how to access this branch and any other additional details as we launch the actual beta.
We expect to be able to make this beta available late next week and last through the weekend. The beta release will coincide with a small balance update to all platforms aimed at addressing the current “shield tech” meta and reining in Larcin’s Cadence.
Private lobbies will be available at the right of the screen. (Please note that both images are a Work In Progress and subject to change)
What to expect? Our main priority with the initial launch of private lobbies is simple. We want you to be able to:
Invite your friends
Select the map of your choice
Choose the game mode (From the currently available Solos, Duos and Trios)
Form teams
Choose the server region to be hosted in
Currently, we have set XP gains in private lobbies to be 50% of normal XP. We had to make a call on enabling XP gains or not in private lobbies and we decided that while we have to do something to keep the integrity of XP earned by players before this update, we want players to still make some progress when playing them.
What’s next? Release! This is our final step before the initial release of private lobbies on the live game and we are very excited to see how you will interact with it. We are currently targeting a full release with the arrival of Season 3 in October to have enough time to react to feedback and address top issues.
Beyond that, we’ll be continuing to gather player feedback about what they want to see as well as looking at ways we can extend and enhance what options are available to Agents, with things such as additional game modes or experimental ways of play in existing ones. For example, we’ve been experimenting with allowing higher player counts in private lobbies and the possibility of having custom team sizes.
Deceive Inc. Hotfix 1.07.03 Is Now Live
Upper Echelon Hotfix Agents, as previously discussed last week, we are rolling out a hotfix for Upper Echelon with some targeted tweaks and bug fixes. To be able to reach a quick-turnaround time for this update, we had to keep it lean and really focus on the top items we’ve seen pop up since the release of Upper Echelon. We are still tracking larger feedback points beyond the scope of this hotfix and will look at when we can deploy requested changes and bug fixes to address these. Before we get to it, let’s have a quick word on the Echelon situation.
Echelon Compensation
As many of you may know, we encountered some issues while launching the new Echelon system. To make a long story short: The fix to the XP overflow was not correctly integrated into the build and some players received echelons right away in an incoherent manner. We have since fixed the problem for new players, but we are taking to heart discussions about the situations being unfair and disappointing.
Here’s what we plan on doing in the near future: We will open a case by case support window to deal with echelon issues. We will let affected players choose their fate: Full reset of Echelons to start fresh or receive an Echelon level compensation based on their playtime on their agents. You may reach out to our support team and submit a ticket at the following link - [URL="'https://support.deceiveinc.com/en'"][U]https://support.deceiveinc.com/en[/U][/URL]
We are currently doing a full database sweep to establish a fair system for compensation and we are getting things ready to support affected players.
Please stay tuned for more news on that front in the near future. We thank you for your patience and know that we are dedicated to making things right.
General Changes
Health Bar Tweaked the health bar according to player feedback to make the number much bigger for ease of reading. We are also putting back notches in the bar to make it clearer at a glance how much health you have left.
Agents Yu-Mi After doing a nerf to headshot damage multipliers in the last live update, we are focusing around tweaking the medi-field bubble. We are making a small but meaningful change by slowing the rate at which the bubble gives out healing. This not only brings down max healing from the bubble full duration a bit, but gives a larger time window to damage agents in it to deny their next healing tick. Coupled with a very nasty bug that we fixed listed below, we think this should make Yu-Mi much more manageable in a team scenario.
We will keep an eye on the discourse around healing after this change. We don’t want to go too hard all at once and bring Yu-Mi back into a state where she cannot perform at all. The nature of the bug we are fixing means that healing was performing much better than intended and will already be quite a change to the overall power level of the healing bubble.
Expertise Mod 1: Medi-Field
Healing tick rate 0.7s=>1s
Gadgets
Spyglass Removed hack speed modifier by popular demand. The spyglass now hacks at equal speed to normal hacking.
Bug Fixes General
Fixed an issue that would lead to the vault terminals alarm not going off with two spies in the same room
Fixed an issue that lead to some characters (Larcin and Chavez) not being able to cancel their expertise at all from time to time
Fixed an issue that lead to door interacts being hard to use in a variety of situations
Fixed an issue that would stop toggle run when moving in diagonal on controller
Levels Fragrant Shore
Fixed an exploit that allowed players to bypass the vault from outside
Fixed an exploit that allowed players to reach the top of the clock tower
Agents Sasori
Fixed an issue that lead to be stuck in sword charge when throwing a projectile right before switching
Fixed an issue with the poison vial that would block the user from doing any actions once thrown *Known issue: You can still sometimes be stuck for a duration, but will now go back to normal afterwards instead of being stuck forever. We are looking to fix this situation*
Yu-Mi
Fixed an issue leading to healing continue even while outside the healing bubble when taking damage
As always agents, we appreciate your feedback and reports. Looking for the best places to join the conversation? Drop into the Official Forums and Discord today!
Deceive Inc. Live Update
Upper Echelon Server Side Update Agents, we rolled out a server side update. This is not the hotfix patch mentioned in the state of the build post, but a smaller step towards addressing some issues in the short term. This will require no download on your end and should take effect within 10 minutes after deployment. Here’s what that means for you:
Balancing Yu-Mi We are taking a quick step to reduce Yu-Mi’s lethality. We will continue looking for further tweaks, but these changes will remove the possibility of a full health one shot headshot while out of cover which could be extremely frustrating for victims.
Weapons Base: Tactical Slingshot
Uncharged Headshot Modifier 1.7 => 1.5
Charged Headshot Modifier 1.7=> 1.5
Mod 2: Longshot
Charged Headshot Modifier 2 => 1.75
Bug Fixes
Fixing issue leading to XP overflow on echelons
This will not change the current state for already affected user and we will discuss next steps in the future on that front*
Sasori
Fixed incorrect fully charged sword value on weapon mod 1 (60 is now 70 as intended)
Larcin
Fixed incorrect max ammo on violence (Now 32)
Hans
Fixed incorrect max ammo and ammo per pack on the jab. (Now 42 with 10 per box)
Deceive Inc. State Of The Build (Post Upper Echelon)
[B]Upper Echelon Community Notes[/B] Agents, welcome back for some community notes as we discuss the hot topics around the Upper Echelon update. We’ve received a lot of feedback in a short period of time and we wanted to tell you a bit about what we will be doing in the short term and where our focus is right now. Let's get to it:
Echelon Issues We are aware of issues with inconsistent behaviors between players regarding echelons. Some players seem to have had an XP overflow, making them skip many ranks while others did not. We are currently investigating the situation and will have clearer news as we get a better understanding of the issues surrounding this. We are deeply sorry that this occurred and we are actively looking for the best path forward for everyone affected.
Balancing Let’s not beat around the bush: The reaction to the lack of Yu-Mi changes and the spyglass change has been very strong. We wanted to talk a little bit about why it happened, and what we are doing on that front.
Let’s start with Yu-Mi.
Yu-Mi has been our worst performing character for every single update for a very long time. While she was perceived as strong since Catalog 2, we wanted to let her breathe a bit and not be too reactive with a character that suffered for as long as she did on the power scale. Another major aspect that leads to this is the timeframe on which we work on updates. We’ve been working on upper echelons for a while at this point and while finishing up updates, we can sometimes lose track of more recent development in the meta. This can lead to a situation where decisions we made many weeks ago are no longer the right call in light of current information. Because of all this, we simply did not weight the frustration of the community on Yu-Mi correctly for this update.
We will be tweaking Yu-Mi in the very short term to make her less oppressive and we will also bring a major fix for her healing bubble that did not make it in the initial update. We will look at how to better avoid situations like this in future updates and we thank you for bringing it to our attention.
And now for the spyglass. We knew this change would be controversial: The spyglass is the most picked gadget by an extremely wide margin in the game. Our original thinking was this: The Spyglass is a big contributor to speeding up games. You not only hack safely, you save travel time in between intel. We wanted to introduce a balancing factor to this equation and we were confident that time saved by moving between intel would still make the spyglass extremely useful while slowing down game speed.
It’s very clear at this point that this was the wrong call. [B]We will restore the spyglass to its past glory in an incoming hotfix.[/B] We value the place of the spyglass in the meta as a stealthy tool and a good entry point for newcomers to avoid risks and do not want to remove this from the game. We will focus our future efforts on making other gadgets more appealing rather than nerfing the Spyglass.
While these two items have been a few notches above the rest, there are other items we are looking at including the still overbearing presence of umbrella shield quick drop strats and expected fixes of long standing agent related bugs. We are looking into those and will review priorities on agent bugs that are more disruptive to overall gameplay to make sure they get looked at.
As always, we thank you for your continued feedback .
Health UI This one is going to be very simple: The reaction to the updated health UI has been strongly negative and we will be tweaking it in the upcoming hotfix. We are bringing back the notches and the bigger numbers to make it easier to read at a glance.
We will keep you updated on our next steps on all fronts as soon as we have more news to share. Please keep your feedback coming and we will do our best to look into addressing the biggest issues around Upper Echelon as soon as we can.
