2XP - We've got something in store for you just in time for the long weekend! Play anytime from Aug. 31st to Sep.5th to take advantage and earn Double XP! (which may work great with the Echelon system below!)
Upper Echelon Patch Notes Agents, it’s finally time to go in-depth with our next update! Upper Echelon is focused on targeted gameplay enhancements and additions to change up the meta in team based modes, expand options in what and where to loot and enhance our progression systems for high level players. There is a lot to dive into, all inspired by player feedback, so let’s get to it!
General Changes
Echelon System
We’ve received a lot of demand from the player base to expand progression in the game beyond what we currently have. Enter the Echelon system! The goal of this new system is to open up character based progression well beyond mastery 10. [U]No gameplay unlocks will be tied to Echelons[/U], this is really a “completionist” feature that rewards you for continuous play with your favorite agent over long periods of time.
Here’s what you will unlock by leveling up Echelon ranks:
An evolving flair next to your name when playing as a Echelon Ranked character showcasing your progress
You will earn 20 Bonds (our real-money currency) every Echelon Rank.
3 titles per character on Echelon rank 10, 50 and 100.
Do note that Echelons DO NOT reset your gameplay unlocks on a character. You can pursue them without losing any of your hard earned unlocks. Reaching Echelon level 100 should take a sizable amount of time, we are excited to see how far you get into this new system.
Team Revive Rework A major piece of feedback we’ve been looking at for a while now is the overwhelming presence of “body camping” in team-based modes. To remedy this and give players more options, we are adding a new way to revive your teammates while dodging a camping team.
From now on, extraction terminals will allow you to revive your entire team for the cost of 5 intel. They will respawn at the pad immediately, removing the need to make it to their bodies while being camped. This option becomes unavailable in the extraction phase to help drive the match to a conclusion.
Of course, you will still be able to revive your teammates directly at their body with no intel cost if the situation allows it. We think this change will make team matches much more dynamic and interesting and we’ve had a blast playtesting it internally.
Team Revive health thresholds To go along with the revived rework, we are tweaking the max health thresholds after getting revived. We hope these changes will give a bit more lee-way for revived players to make a difference, while still making it undesirable to get downed early in a match.
Revive health thresholds before: 75-50-30 Max Health
Revive thresholds now: 80-60-40 Max Health
Package Restore The player that gets the package from the vault first will now get a full restore for them and their team. This will put everyone back at full health, but also put all your teammates back at the max health threshold if they have been revived before in the match.
This will NOT resurrect teammates that are currently downed or out for good though, so make sure you get your teammates back up before capturing that package if possible.
New Gameplay element: Lost and found boxes While we are happy with the keycard changes from Season 2, one side effect of their inclusion was to devalue staff rooms in the overall structure of matches. To remedy this while still keeping control over match pace, we are introducing a new element unique to these rooms for players to seek out: Lost and found boxes. For 5 intel, players can hack them open to find a random drop from a list of possibly high value items, including keycards and field upgrades. Be careful though: there is a small chance to loot less valuable items too. Weight the options carefully!
New lootables
Three new item types will now spawn randomly across all maps. These items will reward you with “meta reward” like XP and currency to spend outside matches.
XP Cassette: Get 200 XP right away
Credits Purse: Get 25XP and 25 Credits
Pile of Bonds: Get 25XP and 5 Bonds
You will find these spawning randomly across the map so keep an eye out for them!
Player Movement Update
With this patch we are rolling out a major upgrade to how we handle player movement. What this means in practice is that player movement will be updated much more frequently by the server, leading to more accurate, smoother and easier to track movement overall. This should have a major impact on the overall game feel and smoothness of combat.
We will continue looking at possible upgrades on this subject in the future.
New XP sources
To help you reach these elusive… ahem… upper echelons, we are adding two new sources of XP to the game. Intel spent on doors and Intel spent on chests (field upgrades chests or lost and found boxes). These XP events scale with how much intel you spent. We hope these will make progressing the game more rewarding, but also encourage team play by spending intel for your allies.
Content Creator Contest Calling Cards
We are happy to introduce our first content creator calling cards following our streaming context! Leaflit was the grand winner in both categories (Hours streamed and viewer hours) while Fitzy and Miss Lovely Shadow were the runners ups in both. You’ll be able to go and grab their calling cards for free in-game with this update from the calling card menu.
Agent Balance General
Low Ammo Count
Updated the threshold that is considered “low ammo” for the UI warning on all the cast to make it fit better with their respective ammo capacity
Ace We are trying something a bit new with Ace’s passives. The bonus damage effect on her base passive has always been a core part of Ace’s identity as a sniper character. We felt that making this effect the baseline for all of Ace’s passives would give more space for different options to be chosen by players. To make this work, we’ve made multiple changes to all three passives outlined below. We are also making weapon tweaks to give the Queen of diamond a more interesting place in Ace’s arsenal and differentiate it further in game feel from the Jack.
Weapons Base: Queen of Diamond
Reload time 2.75s => 2.5s
Fire Rate .8 => .9 shot per second
Damage 30 => 32
Mod 1: Jack of Diamond
Ammo in mag 7 => 8
Fire Rate 1.4 => 1.35 shot per second
Headshot Multiplier 1.75 => .1.5
Reduced Recoil in ADS to help followup shots.
Passive Base: Diamond’s bet
Applies the Exposed status effect on hit on top of the original damage buff.
Mod 1: Crippling Shot
Applies a damage buff on top of the original slow status effect
Mod 2: Neutralizing Shot (Formerly Cover Flush)
Applies the Neutralized status effect on hit.
Applies a damage buff on hit
Cavalière Cavalière has generated a lot of discussions around her investigation skills recently. With this update we are upping significantly the amount of time a clue remains interactable, the range at which you can interact with it and how far you can see it to give Cav her detective feel back in a big way. We are also making some tweaks to her hydras to get into a heavier hitting niche vs the rest of cav’s arsenal.
Weapons Mod 1: Hydras
Bullets per mag 16 => 14 (8 shots to 7 shots)
Fire rate 4.4 => 3.6 bullets per second
Damage 9 => 10 per bullet
Headshot Damage Multiplier 1.75x => 2x
Expertise Base: Investigation
Clue detection Range 25m => 50m
Clue Interaction Range 4m => 10m
Clue Lifetime 60s => 150s
Chase time at 1 clue 5s=> 6s
Chase time at 2 clues 8s=> 9s
Mod 2: Redemption
Clue detection Range 25m => 50m
Clue Interaction Range 4m => 10m
Chase time 12s=> 15s
Chavez With this update, we are making changes on what kind of expertises can get a “cooldown refund” when canceled early. We are making sure that powerful abilities that can change the flow of encounters do not get a refund if players choose to cancel them manually. Chavez fits right into this category with his expertises and is the first on the list for that tweak.
Weapons Base: Sentinel
Reload Time 2.5s => 2.35s
Mod 2: The Duke
Reload Time 3s => 3.1s
Expertise All Expertise
Canceling expertise early will not refund charge anymore
Hans Hans has been doing very well recently, but one of the major pieces of feedback we got from his catalog 2 changes was that his hip fire spread is not accurate enough on the edge of close to medium range. We are adjusting two of his weapons with a different spray pattern and a less aggressive opening of the spray at range to get more reliable hits. This means that we have to lower some of the stats on the weapons to prevent them from becoming absolute killing machines, but overall this should make eliminations far more reliable in a large variety of scenarios.
Weapons Base: The Hook
Fire rate =1.4 => 1.3 shot per second
Damage 45 => 40 (all pellets hit)
Spray pattern change to be more consistent and land more pellets at range
Spray stays tighter for a longer duration before spreading for more consistent hits
Mod 1: The Jab
Bullets per mag 8 => 10
Damage per shot 30 => 23
Spray pattern change to be tighter and more consistent to land
Larcin Larcin is getting the same treatment as Chavez: No more cooldown refund for canceling his abilities early. In his case though, we are bringing the overall cooldown back down a bit to compensate since we have better control without the refund. We are also giving back a bit of power to Cadence to make it an appealing choice again.
Weapons Mod 1: Cadence
Damage 10 => 12
Fire Rate 9 => 10 bullets per second during burst
Delay between bursts 0.4s => .0375s
Expertise All Expertise
Canceling expertise early will not refund charge anymore
Reduced cooldown from 75 seconds to 60 seconds
Madame Xiu While we are currently looking at some tweaks to Xiu’s expertise in the future, this update brings a simple change to her burst weapon. With this change, Longshen should feel more reactive and become a better choice by allowing faster followup shots.
Weapons Mod 1: Longshen
Delay between bursts 0.45s => .0375s
Red While Red is mostly getting bug fixes this update, we have updated her lovebomb to be more consistent with her other abilities in a team scenario.
Expertise Mod 2: Love bomb
Allies in the radius of the bomb will regain cover if an enemy triggers it.
Squire Squire used to be the king, but recent nerfs have hit him a bit too hard with the evolving balancing around him. We are mostly focusing on making his base weapon a solid option and tweaking the trident slightly to make it a bit faster on its burst.
Weapons Base: Lance
Bullets per mag 11 => 12
Fire Rate 3 => 3.2 bullets per second
Damage 15 => 17
Mod 1: Trident
Fire rate 9 => 10 Bullets per second during burst
Sasori For Sasori, we are entirely focused on making the interplay between his sword and throwing weapons smoother and more viable. We are reducing the cooldown after a sword strike on all his weapons and making it especially low on Yuki and Hikari to really allow you to set up the slow on a fight’s start with less of a severe downside. We have also changed how to charge his mod 1 to remove the need to hold two buttons at the same time.
Weapons Base: Ame and Kage
Sword cooldown after a strike 1.25s => 1.15s
Mod 1: Hyõ and Hanei
*Functionality Change* Sword now charges simply by holding the ADS button, no longer needing to hold both buttons at the same time.
Sword cooldown after a uncharged strike 1.25s => 1.15s
Mod 2: Yuki and Hikari
Sword cooldown after a strike 1.15s => 0.9s
Yu-Mi Yu-Mi has received extensive changes for season 2 and has been doing much much better since. We are leaving her untouched for this update and will watch how the meta evolves around her.
Gadget Balance With this balancing pass we are mostly focusing on diminishing the oppressiveness of the trace status effect. The hacktrap becoming much more reliable than before has made the effect quite a bit more present and while we are looking at more involved tweaks to how it works in the future, we are reducing trace duration in the immediate future to make trace less of a dire situation.
Spyglass Spyglass hack speed has been reduced by 30% to give players a reason to sometimes take a risk and hack manually. We think the spyglass should come with a choice between efficiency and safety that you might want to alternate depending on the situation instead of always being the best choice.
Reduced hackspeed in spyglass by 30%
Recon Drone
Reduced tracing time 20 => 14 seconds
Hacktrap
Reduced tracing time 12 => 7 seconds
Tripwire
Added a short delay before being able to re-trigger the same tripwire on the same victim, preventing it from blowing cover multiple times per frame
Mimic
Can now hack and interact while in mimic form
Bug Fixes General
Secret passages will no longer close on players. They will re-open instead if you approach them while closing.
Fixed an issue that would lead to players appearing out of cover to other players even when they regained cover
Fixed an issue that allowed players to open shortcuts into purple rooms from outside
Lowered volume on the Tripwire Presents intro movie
Fixed an issue that would cause spies meleeing while crouched to appear standing up in third person
Fixed an issue that lead to the ink “random access memory” to have inconsistent patterns in third person
Fixed an issue that caused status effect to stay active during the victory screen
Fixed an issue that caused the navmode icon of the package to hide gameplay elements
Fixed an issue that lead to the “being revived” message staying on screen if the revive is interrupted
Fixed an issue that lead to incorrect health total in UI after being revived
Agents Chavez
Fixed an issue that lead to Chavez health dropping to 130 when grabbing a bullet proof fabric field upgrade while under the effect of passive mod 1
Hans
Fixed an issue that allowed Hans to shoot two expertise projectiles back to back without cooldown.
Larcin
Fixed an exploit with Larcin’s zone expertise allowing some characters to shoot without losing invisibility.
Fixed an issue that lead to revive icons being visible on dead agents when Larcin is invisible
Madame Xiu
Fixed an issue that would break social interactions if Xiu used her expertise on a NPC already in one.
Sasori
Fixed an issue that allowed Sasori to shoot and melee at the very same time.
Fixed an issue that lead to Sasori not being able to loot ammo with Hyõ and Hanei
Fixed an issue that could lock Sasori from doing any action after using his vial
Fixed an issue that would lead to kunai failing to fire right after a charge sword strike
Fixed an issue that lead to sword charge VFX being visible even when in cover
Fixed an issue that caused Sasori’s sword to stay stuck on his hand when switching tools
Fixed an issue that lead to kunai staying visible even when out of ammo
Fixed an issue that lead to darts becoming invisible after using expertise mod 2
Spies traced by Sasori now get a “traced” notification
Red
Fixed an issue with Canceling expertise early will not refund charge anymore
Fixed an issue on love bomb that could lead to players appearing out of cover when triggering it.
Fixed an issue that led to text that should only be visible to Red’s allies on the love bomb being visible to enemies.
Fixed an issue that allowed Red to use her succubus kiss expertise twice without cooldown
Yu-Mi
Fixed an issue that allowed players to shoot two expertise back to back without cooldown.
Levels Silver Reef
Bathroom doors can no longer keep you stuck inside the stalls. (Even if you have to go really badly!)
Fragrant Shore
Fixed the collision of some balconies that would prevent players from jumping above them.
Upper Echelon Preview Brief
Agents,
With "Upper Echelon 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.
2XP - We've got something in store for you just in time for the long weekend! Play anytime from Aug. 31st to Sep.5th to take advantage and earn Double XP! (which may work great with the Echelon system below!)
Upper Echelon Patch Notes Agents, it’s finally time to go in-depth with our next update! Upper Echelon is focused on targeted gameplay enhancements and additions to change up the meta in team based modes, expand options in what and where to loot and enhance our progression systems for high level players. There is a lot to dive into, all inspired by player feedback, so let’s get to it!
General Changes
Echelon System
We’ve received a lot of demand from the player base to expand progression in the game beyond what we currently have. Enter the Echelon system! The goal of this new system is to open up character based progression well beyond mastery 10. [U]No gameplay unlocks will be tied to Echelons[/U], this is really a “completionist” feature that rewards you for continuous play with your favorite agent over long periods of time.
Here’s what you will unlock by leveling up Echelon ranks:
An evolving flair next to your name when playing as a Echelon Ranked character showcasing your progress
You will earn 20 Bonds (our real-money currency) every Echelon Rank.
3 titles per character on Echelon rank 10, 50 and 100.
Do note that Echelons DO NOT reset your gameplay unlocks on a character. You can pursue them without losing any of your hard earned unlocks. Reaching Echelon level 100 should take a sizable amount of time, we are excited to see how far you get into this new system.
Team Revive Rework A major piece of feedback we’ve been looking at for a while now is the overwhelming presence of “body camping” in team-based modes. To remedy this and give players more options, we are adding a new way to revive your teammates while dodging a camping team.
From now on, extraction terminals will allow you to revive your entire team for the cost of 5 intel. They will respawn at the pad immediately, removing the need to make it to their bodies while being camped. This option becomes unavailable in the extraction phase to help drive the match to a conclusion.
Of course, you will still be able to revive your teammates directly at their body with no intel cost if the situation allows it. We think this change will make team matches much more dynamic and interesting and we’ve had a blast playtesting it internally.
Team Revive health thresholds To go along with the revived rework, we are tweaking the max health thresholds after getting revived. We hope these changes will give a bit more lee-way for revived players to make a difference, while still making it undesirable to get downed early in a match.
Revive health thresholds before: 75-50-30 Max Health
Revive thresholds now: 80-60-40 Max Health
Package Restore The player that gets the package from the vault first will now get a full restore for them and their team. This will put everyone back at full health, but also put all your teammates back at the max health threshold if they have been revived before in the match.
This will NOT resurrect teammates that are currently downed or out for good though, so make sure you get your teammates back up before capturing that package if possible.
New Gameplay element: Lost and found boxes While we are happy with the keycard changes from Season 2, one side effect of their inclusion was to devalue staff rooms in the overall structure of matches. To remedy this while still keeping control over match pace, we are introducing a new element unique to these rooms for players to seek out: Lost and found boxes. For 5 intel, players can hack them open to find a random drop from a list of possibly high value items, including keycards and field upgrades. Be careful though: there is a small chance to loot less valuable items too. Weight the options carefully!
New lootables
Three new item types will now spawn randomly across all maps. These items will reward you with “meta reward” like XP and currency to spend outside matches.
XP Cassette: Get 200 XP right away
Credits Purse: Get 25XP and 25 Credits
Pile of Bonds: Get 25XP and 5 Bonds
You will find these spawning randomly across the map so keep an eye out for them!
Player Movement Update
With this patch we are rolling out a major upgrade to how we handle player movement. What this means in practice is that player movement will be updated much more frequently by the server, leading to more accurate, smoother and easier to track movement overall. This should have a major impact on the overall game feel and smoothness of combat.
We will continue looking at possible upgrades on this subject in the future.
New XP sources
To help you reach these elusive… ahem… upper echelons, we are adding two new sources of XP to the game. Intel spent on doors and Intel spent on chests (field upgrades chests or lost and found boxes). These XP events scale with how much intel you spent. We hope these will make progressing the game more rewarding, but also encourage team play by spending intel for your allies.
Content Creator Contest Calling Cards
We are happy to introduce our first content creator calling cards following our streaming context! Leaflit was the grand winner in both categories (Hours streamed and viewer hours) while Fitzy and Miss Lovely Shadow were the runners ups in both. You’ll be able to go and grab their calling cards for free in-game with this update from the calling card menu.
Deceive Inc. Development Roadmap - August 2023 Edition
Agents, with the Neon Nights and second catalog being in player hands, we felt it was time to once again update everyone on development plans moving ahead! In the newly updated roadmap you'll see our plans for an update later this month, featuring some of the top player requested feedback items, as well as our first tentative ETA for the private lobbies feature coming before the third season.
Let us know what you are most excited about and keep that feedback coming!
Agent Survey - Duos & Trios
Agents, with the release of the experimental Duos mode, we want to gather your feedback! Please take a moment to answer a few short questions in our Deceive Inc. Duos & Trios Survey
Developer Duo Stream
Join us as we stream the new experimental Duo's queue!
Deceive Inc. Hotfix 1.07.01
Agents,
As discussed in our “state of the build” post last week, we are dropping our first Season 2 hotfix this week to address a wide range of issues as well as some early adjustments to Sasori. We are actively monitoring the overall state of things to better target our next round of changes and prioritize top bug fixes in the coming weeks.
Once again, thank you for your continued feedback and we hope to see you on the field!
Agents Balance
Ace
Trying to aim with Ace while walking was always a difficult act because of the very intense sway. We are changing this animation to make aiming more stable while on the move.
Weapons
All Weapons
Reduced Sway significantly while walking in ADS.
Sasori We are still actively looking at feedback around Sasori and the direction he will be trending in the roster. We had a few early points of feedback we wanted to act on quickly: His weapon mod 1 is clearly not a competitive option currently and his overall time out after a sword swing is too high. We are focusing these changes around making the sword more reliable for all variants and buffing the overall utility of his Kunais.
Passive
Base: Poison sense
Now shows a “traced” status effect for the victim
Weapons
Base: Ame and Kage
Crit Multiplier: 2.7 --> 2.45
Sword Range: 3m --> 3.5m
Sword Cooldown after a Strike: 1.4s --> 1.25s
Mod 1: Hyõ and Hanei
Damage per Kunai: 7 --> 8
Kunai Charge Time: 0.5s per --> 0.375s per
Kunai Spray pattern is tighter
Sword Un-charged Slice Cooldown after a strike: 1.5s --> 1.25s
Sword Uncharged Slice DMG: 40 --> 30
Sword Charging time: 1.9s --> 1.7s
Sword Range: 3m --> 3.5m
Mod 2: Yuki and Hikari
Sword Cooldown after a Strike: 1.2s --> 1.15s
Sword Range: 3.5m --> 4m
Bug Fixes
General
Fixed an issue where equipped inks would not be visible in pregame intro
Fixed an issue that led to the drone being unaffected by the scrambler
Mimics optimizations in maps for performance gains
Changed “teams” name to “Trio” for no suspicious reasons
Fixed an issue that allowed you to “kill” your agent reflection in the first tutorial room
Fixed a misspelling on Hans’s Catalog 2 skin tattoo. (Thanks for pointing it out to us!)
Fixed an issue leading to Tactical Grey being the wrong color
Network optimizations
Levels
Fixed an issue that led to a fountain in Fragrant Shore having no lighting on it
Fixed a stuck spot for NPC in Fragrant Shore
Agents Chavez
Fixed an issue that led to Chavez’s Passive Mod 1 to deplete its over heal faster than intended after gaining health.
Sasori
Fixed an exploit that allowed Sasori to bypass his fire rate limit
Fixed an issue leading to Sasori’s Sword being invisible when switching tools
Fixed an issue where ADS could be triggered while pressing nothing on Sasori if left click and right click were pressed simultaneously before.
Fixed an issue where Sasori’s dart would stay invisible after using Expertise Mod 2.
Fixed an issue that could lead to staying stuck when releasing mid-charge with Sasori Weapon Mod 1
Fixed an issue where switching back to weapons immediately after throwing a poison vial could lock Sasori out of attacking
Fixed an issue that led to a damage mismatch when shooting dummies in the pre-game lobby with weapon Mod 1
Fixed an issue that led to Sasori having no footsteps sound
Fixed an issue that led to Sasori having no vials in his hand while in cover using coated weaponry
Tweaks to Sasori Sword VFX to better communicate its range
Fixed an issue that led to Sasorir’s poison VFX on coated weaponry being visible even in cover
Fixed an issue that led to Sasori’s mastery level 10 calling card not being awarded
Fixed an issue that led to Sasori’s Quartz skin alternate look to be a Red skin instead
Tweaked Weapon Mod 1 Kunai trail to make them easier to see
Yu-Mi
Fixed an issue where Yu-Mi Expertise bubbles would detonate on low walls in front of her even when aiming above. This fix should improve accuracy overall with Yu-Mi Expertises
About Melee Reliability
We are looking to deploy a server side change to how melee is handled to improve the reliability of hits, especially when latency is involved. This change should roll-out without the need to update the game client.
Deceive Inc. State Of The Build (Post Neon Nights)
Agents! We are thrilled to see the overall reaction to Neon Nights and we wanted to give a small status update before we head into the week-end. Our current priority is to track down and fix the biggest issues affecting the patch and are targeting a hotfix release next week. This will include fixes to newly discovered exploits, quality of life tweaks to Sasori and larger fixes that did not make it in time in Catalog 2.
We are also currently tracking an ongoing issue with Mastery XP being stuck for some players. We’ve pushed a tentative fix on the back-end and are still tracking the issue to see if it resolves for all players. We will keep you posted on this one as it is a top priority.
From the balancing side, we are digesting feedback and actively looking at how things evolve. One thing you can expect to see next week is tweaks to Sasori (especially his weapon mod 1 and overall sword feel) to address some of the most present feedback we’ve seen on his kit. We will of course keep looking at how things develop to prepare the next round of changes around Sasori and the cast at large.
We want to extend a huge thanks for your feedback, patience and dedication as we work to get the most pressing issues sorted out as soon as possible.
We have also just pushed a small PC only stability hotfix. Details here: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/deceive-inc-pc-only-client-hotfix.2339644/
The Neon Nights Update Is Here Agents!
NEON NIGHTS UPDATE Agents, it’s finally time to lift the curtain on what’s coming for season 2. We’ve been hard at work to get you this [U]Major[/U] content drop featuring (but not limited to):
A new spy
A new catalog
A long list of tweaks, updates and reworks gathered from player feedback
We are extremely excited to see you dive into this new content and are eternally grateful for your continued support as we work on expanding Deceive Inc.
Now let’s get to it, shall we?
Major Additions New Agent: Sasori the Venomous Assassin
Once Hans’ loyal henchman and renowned international assassin, Sasori, had a crisis of conscience leading him to retire from his villainous ways to open a quaint little restaurant in Osaka. After a long period of soul searching he is finally back on the field with a new perspective on life and a renewed sense of purpose.
Sasori is an all-new tracker agent that excels at hit and run attacks to single out and finish targets with flair. He brings our first first hybrid range/melee weapon in the form of thrown projectiles and a blade, allowing him to harass targets from afar and close in for a swift elimination.
New Status Effect: Poisoned
A master of poisons, Sasori crafted a new non-lethal recipe that prevents his rivals from healing and spending intel for the duration. This means that even picking up a spy cache while poisoned will not heal you at all! In conjunction with his passives giving him different advantages against poisoned foes, he is a true menace for anyone careless enough to end up on the wrong side of his blades.
We are thrilled to welcome Sasori into Deceive Inc.’s roster and we hope you enjoy discovering his intoxicating toolkit.
Catalog 2: Neon Nights This season, we jump into a future of corporate espionage, back-handed deals and treacherous board meetings. Neon Nights is here with [U]50 levels of cyberpunk inspired unlockables to obtain[/U]. We adjusted reward content a bit this time around to have more high value items overall. We hope you like the new styles you’ll be able to rock on the field!
Purchasing the premium catalog will give you instant access to our newest agent and exclusive rewards. [U]As a reminder, players can still buy the new agent with Credits earned by simply playing[/U].
Reactive Ink Neon Nights introduces our first reactive ink with the Random Access Memories reward in the catalog. This reactive ink will change entirely when in or out of cover to fit the current situation.
About Misery Empire For users that did not purchase Misery Empire, Neon Night will now become the current season to spend catalog tokens on. Do not worry though: [U]Misery Empire will always stay in the season menu. You can go back and purchase it at any time if you decide you need some noir in your life down the lin[/U]e. Like we discussed at launch, purchased catalogs NEVER expire.
General Changes
Heat Changes Heat is evolving once again from feedback we’ve been gathering around the release of High Alert. While the overall sentiment seems to be trending much closer to a good place for heat, the majority of feedback is still showing you want a bit more consequences. With this update, we are bringing some spicy changes to how you generate heat!
Downing a civilian, staff, or technician will now give a full heat level
Downing the VIP will now give 3 Heat levels
Guards will remain the same at about half a heat level per guard
The idea with these changes is pretty simple: We want to give value to go back to lower level cover and not encourage staying as a guard the entire match. Wrongly guessing will now carry bigger immediate consequences that will encourage players to better analyze situations.
For the VIP, we want to give more meaning to coming across them and give them a place as a disguise option. With this change, shooting any VIP on sight will carry huge potential ramifications that could lead to your immediate defeat. Think wisely.
In addition to these changes, we are adding a buffer of time to prevent situations where you could hit multiple NPCs at the same time with a single shot leading to a huge amount of heat generated. This should help keep things clearer from a player perspective.
We’ll monitor how this affects the game in the days following the release of the update to bring adjustments as needed.
Spawn Economy Rebalance For this season, we’ve spent some time rebalancing ressources spawning in a few key ways with a single unified goal in mind: Slowing down overall pace of matches and giving some reasons to look around the vault before going to the objective.
These changes touch two major components:
Keycard Spawns Changes
Purple keycards will no longer spawn outside of purple rooms. This will prevent early game loots that would dramatically speed up a match.
A small amount of keycards can now spawn inside the vault. This will give some chance for players that did not have much luck in the first phase to scrape back an advantage during the infiltration phase.
The Golden Keycard will now spawn inside the vault. This will prevent players from having a full keycard deck before the vault is opened.
Ammo Spawn Changes
Reduced overall pool of ammo spawn in all maps.
Reduced chance for ammo to spawn in public areas.
The reduction in ammo pools is not massive, but we feel it is currently too easy to stay full of ammo without any specific efforts in looting. This should give ammo dispensers a more interesting role in how you spend your intel. We hope making the ammo economy tighter will result in a more interesting play experience overall.
A final new addition on this topic is the addition of more “fixed” food locations on maps. You will find more snacks around kitchens, restaurants and places where you would expect to be able to eat. This should help players running nutritional supplements to have more surefire ways to get a snack.
Purple Chest Tweaks In season 1, we introduced the purple chest spawns in rooms without a vault terminal. While the effect this had on the game was overall very beneficial, a side effect of it was that now the purple powerup was actually rarer than the gold during the opening phase of a game. We are now spawning two purple chests in non-vault terminal rooms to compensate for this.
This also means that arriving second in one of those rooms in a solo match will still carry a reward instead of leaving you empty handed. We hope this change will allow a more interesting use of field upgrade builds overall.
Account Max Level Increase Max Account level is getting raised up to level 400 with the release of season 2. An all-new progression ink has been added for players that will reach this new milestone: The Malachite ink! Updated XP Values We’ve upped the values of XP sources all around for a smoother progression with more rewards from the different lootables and interaction with in-game objectives. We’ll keep watching the progression rate and player feedback to make this aspect of the game more pleasant for all types of players.
Game Performance Optimizations Work continues to improve performance and with it comes a long list of optimizations. [U]We expect these new tweaks to have the biggest impact on medium and high graphic settings[/U]. It’s our hope that they will allow more people to play at medium instead of low for example to get a similar result.
We will keep monitoring how performance evolves on the wide variety of hardware that the community is using to continue making further improvements.
New graphical options and automatic hardware detection
We’ve added new functionality to better choose starting settings for players getting into the game and exposed more granular graphics settings for you to tweak at your leisure.
We will continue our commitment to give you more control over the look and performance of the game in future patches.
Agent Select Menu Rework One recurring piece of community feedback we’ve received ever since the alpha days was the desire to get more precise information about the nitty gritty details of all elements of a build. This update is another major step in that direction.
We’ve reworked the weapon tooltips in the agent select menu to showcase every single stat they have in a completely transparent way. This showcase is directly fetched from weapon stats, that means that live updates to balancing will be directly shown in this menu without a client update.
We want to give this transparency treatment to more elements of the game as we continue updating it, so stay tuned for more developments on that front.
Inks Menu Rework In the continuous theme of making menus better, we’ve reworked the ink menu both from a UI standpoint to better showcase the weapon and from a lighting standpoint to give a more accurate representation of how inks look in game.
Additional Field Upgrade Decks We’ve doubled the amount of field upgrade decks you can customize to give you better control on the finer details of your builds.
Enhanced Controller Settings Adding controller settings has been a major talking point for our console players (and those who play with a controller on PC) and with this update, we are increasing the amount of tweaks you’ll be able to do to better tailor your experience.
You will find new settings for disabling controller vibrations, aim-assist and tweaking the finer details of the “quick-turn” mechanic that triggers when holding your joystick completely to speed up turns when holding your joystick in a direction.
Please keep the feedback coming on what you would like to see in terms of future controller features and we will be continuing our work to expand the options over time.
Melee Shot Delay We’ve received quite a bit of feedback on some deadly combinations of high damage weapons with a charged melee. For example, a charged melee with a king shot from an ace could be devastating on the receiving party without much chance to counterplay.
In this update, we now have a stat that allows us to tweak the delay before firing after a melee on a per-weapon basis. We have not yet set different values per weapon in this update as it’s a balancing change that requires a lot of consideration across the board, but you can expect notes on this melee shot delay to appear in balancing patches this season.
Reduced Cover Breadcrumbs Duration We want players to feel confident they can change cover more often to take full advantage of the heat changes in public areas. One part of the risk of changing cover is the duration for which the breadcrumbs left behind when changing cover stay. We have reduced this duration to keep the danger of swapping cover when spies are in the vicinity, but making it less of a long term clue that a spy was here.
Fragrant Shore Tweaks We’ve updated Fragrant Shore to prevent some free room skips in green rooms around the level. This made the bounce mat a bit too good of a pick. Coupled with keycard changes, this should slow down matches significantly.
Having these green room skips also led to the side-effect of having spots in the map with extremely high concentration of combat because multiple players would head to the same skip location. This was particularly true with the green room at the ground floor of the hotel.
New credits cosmetics In addition to all the skins and intro poses that a new agent brings to the table, we are adding more inks to the credits offering players can buy or gain in a loot briefcase. We hope you enjoy them!
Elite Guards Presence The amount of Elite Guards present before the vault has been reduced from 6 to 5 to make them slightly rare to encounter and make disguising as them all the time a bit riskier.
It’s not a massive change, but we think it will affect balancing in a favorable way.
Intel XeSS Update Updated Intel XeSS to the latest version.
A note on the Vault terminal Alarm The season 2 preview mentioned removing the vault terminal alarm that was added in season 1 to increase the uncertainty players will feel when in a purple room with elite guards or the VIP.
While we still believe that adding uncertainty to these rooms is a desirable goal, we don’t think the risks of removing the vault terminal alarm and enabling stronger camping is worth it. We will continue to revisit this goal to find a solution that gives the result we want, without the amount of risk this change brought.
We’ll keep you updated on our next move on this subject in future patches.
Agents Balance In season 2, we are focusing our efforts around two main goals: Raising agents lagging behind in terms of power and lowering the power level of top performing outliers. In this case, the top performing agent is Larcin.
As such, some agents might get extremely minimal or no tweaks at all while others get an extensive list of changes. This is simply because agents close to the top or right in the middle are left lightly touched as we adjust the rest of the cast around them. We feel this is the best way to reach a more balanced playing field and make better targeted adjustments as the season goes on.
As always, we will monitor how these changes affect the meta and the standing of the cast as we plan our next adjustments during the season.
General Agent Balance:
Melee
Slight adjustment to the time it takes to charge a full powered melee to make it a bit more of a commitment.
Fully charged mele time: 0.65 Second => 0.8 Second
Ace With the introduction of our newest tracker, Sasori, we feel Ace needed a buff to her own tracking ability. We are giving her base expertise a fully fledged trace status effect, UI indicator and distance included, to really help her hone in on her target. We hope this makes it a more appealing pick, especially in teams where it’s shared with your entire crew.
Weapons
Base: Queen of Diamond
Fire rate .7 => .8 Bullets per Second
Mod 2: King of Diamond
Animation adjustment to better fit reload speed.
Expertise Base: Queen’s Gaze
The tracking effect is now a full-fledged Trace with a precise indicator on the target.
Cavalière
While we are making a single change to Cavalière, it would be wise not to underestimate its potency. We are lowering the time it takes for Cavalière to fully charge her special melee attack. Coupled with the fact that the entire cast has had their charged melee time raised slightly, this makes Cavalière uniquely positioned to capitalize on her passive’s strength more often.
Passive All Passives:
Charge time for Cav full charged melee: 1 Second => .8 Second
Chavez After the nerfs we gave Chavez in the last few patches, he seems to have settled in a healthier spot as a strong pick, but not an outlier. In this update we are mostly focused on giving a more distinct use case to the Sentinel VS the Vigilante by making the Vigilante a full fast-firing weapon archetype and balancing the sentinel around its medium fire power.
We are also making a tweak to the “Tough as Nails” passive to make it a more viable choice in a very competitive passive ability landscape. Weapons Base: Sentinel
Reload Time 2.4s => 2.5s
Crit Damage Multiplier 2 X =>1.75X
Mod 1: Vigilante
Reload Time 1.8s => 1.65s
Fire rate 1.8 => 2.3 Bullets per Second
Damage 20 => 18
Crit Damage Multiplier 1.75 X =>1.5X
Limb Damage Modifier .75X =>.9X
Passive Mod 1: Tough as Nails
Overheal decay speed is now half as fast as before to give more opportunities to leverage it.
Health numbers won’t aggressively tick anymore like you are taking damage when overheal decays.
Hans Hans is getting some significant adjustments this update. Spray patterns for his hipfire have been revisited to make them more efficient in close quarter fighting. More importantly, both of his “wave” based passive are getting the added benefit of a slow to cause some friction that will keep enemies in Hans’ preferred range if he can get the drop on them. We hope these buffs will keep Hans on his upward trajectory!
Weapons All Weapons:
Tweaks to spray patterns on all weapons to make close range shots more reliable.
Base: Hook
Fire rate 1.25 => 1.4 Shots Per Second
Passive Base: Dreadful Presence
Spies caught inside the wave originating from Hans will be slowed for 2 seconds.
Mod 1: Fear Projection
Spies caught inside the wave originating from a rival spy will be slowed for 4.5 seconds.
*Known issue* These changes are currently not described in Hans’s agent select screen since they came in late. The written details will be added in game in a future patch.
Larcin Larcin has been the top performing agent and the highest pick rate for a little while now. While we don’t want to lose what makes him unique and interesting, it’s clear that his options are too potent currently compared to the rest of the cast.
Our goal with this update is to tone Larcin’s oppressiveness down, give a better use case to his second expertise (outside of the exploit he had with it) and make sure he has to play better to fully make use of his very powerful expertise options.
Weapons Base: Silence
Fire rate 6 => 5.5 Bullet Per Second
Reload time 1s => 1.15s
Mod 1: Cadence
Magazine size reduced 18 => 14 bullets
Ammo per box and overall pool adjusted with new mag size
Fire rate 10 => 9 Bullet Per Second
Reload time 1.1 => 1.25 Second
Mod 2: Violence
Reload time 1.2s => 1.25s
Expertise Base: Au Revoir
Duration reduced 7s => 6s
Cooldown extended 60s => 75s
Decreased expertise refund value when canceled
Delay before immaterial kicks after use .2s => .25s
Mod 1: Grande Finale We’ve made some changes to Grand Finale to enable more interesting team play with it, but also address the cheesy strategy of peeking and shooting instantly without any reaction time on the receiving end. We think this new iteration will be more fair, but also more interesting for Larcin and his team.
Larcin and his allies can now shoot at any time inside.
Shooting immediately breaks the immaterial effect
A delay of 1.5 seconds without shooting is necessary to go immaterial again.
Height has been raised to prevent jumping from the top, even in stairs.
Cooldown extended 60s => 75s
Delay before zone drops in after press .4s => .25s
Mod 2: Tour du Chapeau
Duration reduced 8s => 6s
Cooldown extended 60s => 75s
Decreased expertise refund value when canceled
Delay before immaterial kicks after use .2s => .25s
Passive Mod 2: Pickpocket
Adjusted heat per wrong guesses to be higher to fit the new heat (still not a full heat level in one go)
VIP gives more heat when pickpocketed to make them a bigger consideration.
Madame Xiu We are making some adjustments to Madame Xiu’s weapon this update to try and make a better case as to why you should use each of her weapons options. The Longshen has been the dominant weapon in her arsenal recently so we are making a few tweaks to it’s damage output and overall feel while giving a overhaul to the Xuanwu to give more of a “light machine gun” feel with a more present rev up time.
Weapons
Mod 1: Longshen
Damage 12 => 10 per bolt (3 per burst)
Refire delay after burst .55s => .45s
Mod 2: Xuanwu
Starting fire rate 4 => 3 bolts per second.
Rev up time 1s => 2s
Fully Rev up fire rate 8 => 8.1 bolts per second.
Red Lovebite has been the least performant tool in Red’s arsenal and with this update we are giving it a bit of…love. While it breaks our heart to remove the heart-shaped spray pattern, it did limit us quite a bit on the balancing side. We believe that these tweaks will make Red’s shotgun a far more enticing option for close quarter enjoyers.
Weapons Mod 2: Lovebite
Spray tweaks on both hipfire and ADS for a more reliable experience.
Fire rate .95 => .1.15 Shots per second
Squire After a pretty extensive list of changes in the high alert update we are leaving Squire mostly untouched for this one. The reason is quite simple: While he’s now closer to the rest of the cast in terms of analytics, he’s still a very strong pick with a big presence. We will continue monitoring Squire’s trajectory with all the changes to the rest of the cast, but for now, our boy gets a rest.
Passive Mod 1: Sixth Sense
Now applies a real trace, with distance indicator and expected behavior.
Yu-Mi We are bringing more adjustments to Yu-Mi in a continuous effort to make her more competitive. We revisited charge times after launch and after further considerations and overall performance analysis, we feel these should be brought back down to make charge shots more accessible. We are also bringing a highly requested change to the medi field and giving back a bit more gadget cooldown reduction on her base passive to lean more into the “gadgeteer” aspect of her playstyle.
Weapons Base: Tactical Slingshot
Charge time: 1.2s => 1s
Boosted Charged projectile speed to facilitate landing far shots.
Mod 1: Experimental SplitShot
Charge time: 1.2s => 1s
Mod 2: Heavy Longshot
Charge time: 1.5s => 1.3s
Boosted Charged projectile speed to facilitate landing far shots.
Expertise Mod 1: Medi Field
The bubble now only heals Yu-mi and her allies. No more stealing heals!
Reduction to the time healing stops when receiving damage.
Passive Base: Quick Fix
Gadget Cooldown Reduction 50% => 65%
Gadgets Balance
We have some new functions and mechanical changes for some of the gadget roster in this update.
Recon Drone The drone will now be able to open doors you have previously unlocked or have a keycard for. This added functionality makes it a far more potent recon tool to look around the map for rivals or vault terminals.
The drone can now open unlocked doors or doors you have keycards for.
Hacktrap The hacktrap is now much more reliably useful by triggering on security doors even if the victim uses a keycard to enter. This added reliability means we have to lower the time the trace lasts a bit to make it more of a temporary alarm rather than a long form trace that makes escape very difficult. We hope these changes make the hacktrap a more popular choice for tracking loadouts and keeping tabs on other spies.
Hacktrap users now gain 3 intel everytime someone triggers a trap.
Hacktrap now triggers when a keycard is used to open a trapped door.
Lowered Trace time 20s => 12s
Holo-Mimic The mimic has played a big role in the body camping meta in teams. With this update, we are fixing the possibility of pushing bodies around with it.
Can no longer push downed spies' bodies around.
Shield-Brella
We’ve been talking for a while about the frustrating nature of the deployed shield-brella. There are multiple factors that we believe are core to the problem.
The crux of the issue is that the deployed version of the shield is always the best option for a shield user, even in close range, because it enables them to juke around the shield to land shots. With this update, the deployed version of the shield now has a very visible weak point at its base. Any shot, no matter the damage, to the weak point will break the deployed shield instantly. The goal with this is to have a quick response in close quarters to negate the shield easily, while keeping it a good option in longer range fights where the weak point is hard to hit.
The second part is giving a better use case to the in-hand version of the shield. To do this, we are giving the portable version a bit more HP to make it a good option to disengage while moving away or take a few hits as you reposition.
We’ll watch how effectively the weak point helps the player to deal with the shield and will be able to tweak its different aspects further as needed.
Deployed form now has a visible weak point, leading to instant destruction when shot.
In-hand version now has 75 health instead of 50.
Field Upgrades Balance
Field Agent Kit: We are making some adjustments to the field agent kit. With these changes, we are keeping the gold version to be quite playstyle defining, but nerfing slightly other versions that had a bit too much of an impact, especially on high cooldown characters.
Gray 20 => 15
Green 25 => 20
Blue 30 => 25
Purple 40 => 35
Nutritional Supplement: In addition to more “fixed” food location in maps overall, we are buffing food items a bit to give nutritional supplement a bit more use cases. We also buffed slightly the base amount that food gives and scaled the bonuses accordingly.
Base food healing amount 8 => 10
Gray 12 => 15
Green 14 => 18
Blue 16 => 20
Purple 20 => 25
Gold 28 => 30
Bug Fixes
General
Fixed an issue where friends list would appear empty.
Fixed an issue where zooming into loot from a lootcase makes the player stuck on this screen with no way out.
Fixed an issue where status effects visual feedback could be improperly spawned based on distance from world origin.
Fixed an issue where controller settings were not being saved after making changes.
Fixed an issue where heat effects would stay stuck if using a mimic.
Fixed an issue where the mission report would not show up if clicked while spectating.
Fixed an issue where some custom weapon skins would not appear in the lobby line-up.
Fixed an issue where bringing up navmode while meleeing can cause the player to not take out their weapon, rendering them unable to fire.
Adjusted reload timing/animations for some weapons where timing was off rendering players unable to fire.
Fixed an issue where shooting a tracking dart at a target while the drone is flying will do nothing.
Fixed an issue where “call for help” was present in solo matches.
PlayStation 5
Fixed an issue where there was no vibration on the PS5 controller.
Maps
All
Fixed multiple FPS / Performance issues
Hard Sell
Fixed LOD issues in some hardsell rooms that led to assets disappearing at short distance.
Silver Reef
Fixed an issue where four vault terminals were present in very rare conditions.
Fragrant Shore
Fixed an issue where keycards would spawn in areas that cannot be picked up.
Fixed an issue where players were able to get on top of the Capitol.
Fixed an issue where super guards would get stuck in certain areas.
Diamond Spire
Fixed an issue where keycards that spawned in the helipad area would be invisible.
Agents
Chavez
Fixed an issue where unshakable Fortress effect stacks when placed on stairs and hugging the wall.
Fixed an issue where his gray health wasn’t always visible.
Madame Xiu
Fixed an issue where waiting until the last moment of the second cast of Python's Ruse will cause the player to be unable to use any weapons or gadgets until they use the ability again.
Cavalière
Fixed an issue where sometimes her zone can be seen (and heard) by her rivals.
Fixed an issue with Tournament Arc - where eyes do not fade out with rest of body when going near her.
Larcin
Fixed an issue where going invisible while recovering heat will cause the heat to visually persist on-screen.
Fixed an issue where his thrown/reloaded weapon can be heard from far away.
Yu-Mi
Fixed an issue where the medi-field bubble would have much faster healing than intended when entering and leaving it at a fast pace.
Deceive Inc. Season 2 Preview
Season 2 Preview
Agents, it’s time to get a first taste of what is coming for season 2! First of all, thank you for all the feedback we’ve received over the span of season 1. While we could not possibly hope to address everything that was brought up by the player base in a single season, the changes outlined here are directly linked to the continuous feedback we’ve been reading over the past months.
Before we get into the specifics, keep in mind that this is a preview: things are still subject to change and we are not yet ready to dive into agent and gadget changes/balance. Stay tuned for more details on those as we get closer to the season 2 release.
For now, let’s go over the more general changes to the game you can expect to see in the near future:
Major Additions
New Agent Joins the Roster A new tracker agent joins the roster in season 2! This agent will bring an entirely unique weapon type to the game and a relentless playstyle that allows opportunities for ambushes and zoning.
We can't wait to welcome this new agent to the roster and see the plays you'll pull with them on the field, but you’ll have to be a bit more patient for a full reveal…
New Catalog & Progression A new Catalog will be added with 50 levels of progression and completion rewards. We want to keep the theme of the catalog under wraps for a bit longer, but expect some wild new styles for your favorite agents and more high-value rewards.
General Changes
Heat Changes Heat is evolving once again from feedback we’ve been gathering around the release of High Alert. While the overall sentiment seems to be trending much closer to a good place for heat, the majority of feedback is still showing you want a bit more consequences. With this update, we are bringing some spicy changes to how you generate heat!
Downing a civilian, staff or technician will now give a full heat level.
Downing the VIP will now give 3 Heat levels
Guards will remain the same at about half a heat level per guard.
The idea with these changes is pretty simple: We want to give value to going back to lower level cover and not encourage staying as a guard the entire match. Wrongly guessing will now carry bigger immediate consequences that will encourage players to better analyze situations.
For the VIP, we want to give more meaning to coming across them and give them a place as a disguise option. With this change, shooting any VIP on sight will carry huge potential ramifications that could lead to your immediate defeat. Think wisely.
In addition to these changes, we are adding a buffer of time to prevent situations where you could hit multiple NPCs at the same time with a single shot leading to a huge amount of heat generated. This should help keep things clearer from a player's perspective.
We’ll monitor how this affects the game in the days following the release of the update to bring adjustments as needed.
Spawn Economy Rebalance For this season, we’ve spent some time rebalancing resources spawning in a few key ways with a single unified goal in mind: Slowing down the overall pace of matches and giving some reasons to look around the vault before going to the objective.
These changes touch three major components:
Keycard Spawns Changes
Purple keycards will no longer spawn outside of purple rooms. This will prevent early game loots that would dramatically speed up a match.
A small amount of keycards can now spawn inside the vault. This will give some chance for players that did not have much luck in the first phase to scrape back an advantage during the infiltration phase.
The Golden Keycard will now spawn inside the vault. This will prevent players from having a full keycard deck before the vault is opened.
Ammo Spawn Changes
Reduced Overall Pool of Ammo Spawn in All Maps.
Reduced chance for ammo to spawn in public areas.
The reduction in ammo pools is not massive, but we feel it is currently too easy to stay full of ammo without any specific efforts in looting. This also devalues ammo dispensers quite a bit. We hope making the ammo economy tighter will result in a more interesting play experience overall.
Food Spawn Locations
A final new addition on this topic is the addition of more “fixed” food locations on maps. You will find more snacks around kitchens, restaurants, and places where you would expect to be able to eat. This should help players running nutritional supplements to have more surefire ways to get a snack.
Purple Chest Tweaks In season 1, we introduced the purple chest spawns in rooms without a vault terminal. While the effect this had on the game was overall very beneficial, a side effect of it was that now the purple powerup was actually rarer than the gold during the opening phase of a game. We are now spawning two purple chests in non-vault terminal rooms to compensate for this.
This also means that arriving second in one of those rooms in a solo match will still carry a reward instead of leaving you empty handed. We hope this change will allow a more interesting use of field upgrade builds overall.
Account Max Level Increase Max Account level is getting raised up to level 400 with the release of season 2. An all-new progression ink has been added for players that will reach this new milestone: The Malachite ink!
Updated XP Values We’ve upped the values of XP sources all around for a smoother progression with more rewards from the different lootables and interaction with in-game objectives. We’ll keep watching the progression rate and player feedback to make this aspect of the game more pleasant for all types of players.
Performance Work Continued work to improve performance with a long list of optimizations. We expect these new tweaks to have the biggest impact on medium and high graphic settings. It’s our hope that they will allow more people to play at medium instead of low for example to get a similar result.
We will keep monitoring how performance evolves on the wide variety of hardware that the community is using to continue making further improvements.
New graphical options and automatic hardware detection
We’ve added new functionality to better choose starting settings for players getting into the game and exposed more granular graphics settings for you to tweak at your leisure.
Agent Select Menu Rework One recurring piece of feedback we’ve received ever since the alpha days was the desire to get more precise information about the nitty gritty details of all elements of a build. This update is another major step in that direction.
We’ve reworked the weapon tooltips in the agent select menu to showcase every single stats they have in a completely transparent way. This showcase is directly fetched from weapon stats, that means that live updates to balancing will be directly shown in this menu without a client update.
We want to give this transparency treatment to more elements of the game as we continue updating it, so stay tuned for more developments on that front.
Inks Menu Rework In the continuous theme of making menus better, we’ve reworked the ink menu both from a UI standpoint to better showcase the weapon and from a lighting standpoint to give a more accurate representation of how links look in the game.
Additional Field Upgrade Decks We’ve doubled the amount of field upgrade decks you can customize to give you better control over the finer details of your builds.
Enhanced Controller Settings Adding controller settings has been a major talking point for our console players and with this update, we are increasing the amount of tweaks you’ll be able to do to better tailor your experience.
You will find new settings for disabling controller vibrations, aim-assist, and tweaking the finer details of the “quick-turn” mechanic that triggers when holding your joystick completely to speed up turns when holding your joystick in a direction.
Please keep the feedback coming on what you would like to see in terms of future controller features and we will be continuing our work to expand the options over time.
Melee Shot Delay We’ve received quite a bit of feedback on some deadly combinations of high damage weapons with a charged melee. For example, a charged melee with a king shot from an ace could be devastating on the receiving party without much change to counterplay.
In this update, we now have a stat that allows us to tweak the delay before firing after a melee on a per-weapon basis. This means that the overall high damage slow rate of fire weapon will have a slightly longer delay before firing again to give a bit more reaction to a victim.
This is not just a one time tweak, but a new tool in our balancing toolbox in the future.
Fragrant Shore Tweaks We’ve updated Fragrant Shore to prevent some free room skips in green rooms around the level. This made the bounce mat a bit too good of a pick. Coupled with keycard changes, this should slow down matches significantly.
Having these green room skips also led to the side-effect of having spots in the map with extremely high concentrations of combat because multiple players would head to the same skip location. This was particularly true with the green room on the ground floor of the hotel.
Vault terminal Alarm Back in season 1, we added an alarm to vault terminal rooms when two spies from opposite teams were inside the same room. This was made in a time when heat was very weak and nobody but the VIP could enter these rooms. This meant that someone waiting inside could shoot anyone coming in with absolute certainty that they were not an NPC.
This is no longer true with elite guards and the VIP giving 3 heat levels when shot. We feel the vault terminal alarm removes mind game potential and occasions to bamboozle rivals.
We will monitor how this change affects the game, but we feel it will lead to more uncertainty and more interesting encounters.
New Credits Cosmetics In addition to all the skins and intro poses that a new agent brings to the table, we are adding more inks to the credits offering players can buy or gain in a loot briefcase. We hope you enjoy them!
A few notes about balancing While we are not quite ready to dive deep into the details of balancing, we still wanted to give some reassurance on some of the top items of chatter in the community on the balancing front.
First and foremost: Larcin. Both from a community sentiment perspective and from an analytics perspective, Larcin is the top performing agent currently and feels quite oppressive to play against. You can expect adjustments to him to put him more in line with the rest of the cast with catalog 2.
Our focus with this update is really to raise the lowest performers of the cast (Yu-Mi is currently at the bottom of this list) and adjust the top performers. You can expect a similar treatment to gadgets. The shield-brella is getting a much needed nerf to its deployed form and some less used gadgets like the hack-trap and the drone will be getting fun new wrinkles to make them more competitive.
We’ll be diving into all the details closer to season 2’s launch.
Agents, get ready for an extended Double XP Weekend!
