SIGNUPS: Virtual Battlegrounds Season One Global Tournament: June 20th 10AM PDT
Virtual Battlegrounds Season One Kickoff Tournament USD$1K in Prizes 20th June 10AM to 1 PM Pacific Rules and Signup at https://Valvr.com YOU MUST SIGN UP FOR AN ACCOUNT AND JOIN THE EVENT AT VALVR.com to be eligible for prizes
Season One runs for the summer, and brings new weapons, new nades, new skins, new map area, optimizations and more!
Season One Update Released
Hello Warriors!
It's finally time to drop our first major update! Welcome to Season One.
Season One
We're going to go over some of the major features we've added this season as well as share a full patch notes list below at the bottom.
Air Drops
Ranking
Hybrid Elo System: The ELO system wasn't working very well for VBG. The game being a battle royale and not having a large enough player base to do competitive matchmaking made for a system that wasn't very reliable, fair, or forgiving especially for players with very high elo. Instead we've opted in for a new system that combines a traditional point system with an elo system. We're calling it our hybrid elo system.
New Rankings: With the hybrid elo system we've also shipped out new rankings to make ranking up more fun. Now you can flash your ranked emblems around proudly. Way cooler then an arbitrary number.
Recruit - Bronze equivalent
Veteran - Silver equivalent
Warrior - Gold equivalent
Elite - Platinum equivalent
Hero - Diamond equivalent
Master - Masters equivalent
Legend - Challenger equivalent
Skins
We've added a bunch of new skins this season that can all be unlocked for FREE by completing achievements. Here's a couple that are unlocked at the end of the season as season rewards!
Legend Skin
How to get it: The skin can only be unlocked by placing in the Legend league by the end of the season for season one. It's the hardest rank to achieve so it will be an incredibly rare skin.
Warrior Skin
How to get it: The skin can only be unlocked by placing in the Warrior League by the end of the season. It's the equivalent for Gold in most other competitive games so it will be difficult to unlock but most players who play VBG regularly will be able to unlock it.
Sandford
Welcome to Sanford: The new location inside of Virtual Battlegrounds.
More Information: It features apartment complexes, bars, a shopping plaza, small gardens, a town hall, and some mid sized town homes.
Going Forward: Technically Sandford is actually a complete overhaul of what was Maetland main. In addition to building new locations, we want to redo locations in the world that we think can be improved. Previously Maetland in our opinion was dull with a lot of copy paste buildings that didn't offer much in terms of gameplay. Sandford is the first on our list of our areas we wanted to redesign.
Tournaments
Our First Tournament: If you haven't seen already we're hosting our first tournament this coming Saturday in cooperation with the Virtual Athletic League!
More Information: For more information on our tournament check out last weeks blog posts.
Added ability for players to go to separate helicopters
Added ability for players to hold the gun by there front mount.
Added ability for players to be to swap pistol main hands.
Added 3 new Easter eggs
Design Changes
Barrett 50 cal only spawns in air drops now
Increased lowest lod setting from 0 to 30
Leaderboards have been reset
Games cannot be ranked in private lobbies and in games with less than 4 players.
Replaced old map with an updated one
Added VFX for when players enter/exit the killroom.
Bug Fixes
Fixed weapons sometimes disappearing off hips
Fixed guns sometimes spinning when picking them up
Fixed an exploit people were doing to climb there bodies into the ground only showing their head
Fixed no collision on trees with low LOD settings
Fixed equipment dropping from others to other players feet when they die
Fixed an issue where glass breaks no where near you when you toss a gun
Fixed sprinting with knife not making the player the same speed as without one
Fixed an issue where you couldn't create a private match after the first attempt
Fixed an issue where players could grab backpack weapons from hips with backpack weapons on
Fixed an issue where iron sights stay upright on m4 after putting on a scope
Fixed an issue where the five-seven shoots a foot to the left
Fixed an issue where the P90 ammo UI flickers
Fixed an issue where toggle grip settings was not working for front hand gun holding
Fixed an issue where sometimes players couldn't grab snipers in the upstairs lobby
Fixed an issue where the hand would sometimes be open animated while holding a gun
Fixed an issue where picking up a bots gun can sometimes eat your ammunition
Known new issues
We're currently reworking the AI. They're a bit wonky right now, hotfix coming soon.
Map on settings menu is disabled, use the forearm wrist map until we hotfix this.
New skins UI can be unresponsive. This will be a part of our next hotfix.
See you on the battlefield warriors!
VAL Season One Tournament
Hello Warriors!
As some of you may already be aware we've got some exciting news! We're hosting a tournament in cooperation with the Virtual Athletic League on June 20TH from 1-4PM EST. There will be $1,000 in cash prizes. It's time to find out who the real Legends of the Virtual Battlegrounds are.
In order to receive a prize for winning YOU MUST SIGN UP.
Sign up as a player on the VAL page and then on the carousel on the right way for VBG to pop in and then select Opt in.
Where to Watch?
During the event we will be hosting a Twitch stream that anyone can hop in and view. We'll have a casting team that will be casting the feeds of several of our known top players compete.
A veteran caster who used to go by the name of KaboomTV. He's been playing VBG a bunch and will bring of lot of insight and experience o the game.
Seanybaby2
That's me! The lead developer of Virtual Battlegrounds. I'll be there to bring my knowledge and experience to the game. Hopefully I'll add a bit of fun too.
Color Caster
We're also talking to a couple of big name color casters with experience casting pro matches of games like PUBG. More details on this soon.
Featured players
MCPVR, SourGurl, and CursingLLama
have all been playing Virtual Battlegrounds since the early stages of the alpha in 2019. When they're not shooting someone from behind a tree you can usually find them at the asylum clearing hallways.
Big Datez, Africa, and JimmyMcBobs
have been sitting at the top of the leaderboards since the games launch and are some of our favorites for the tournament. Collectively they've sunk in as many hours into VBG as the rest of our entire gaming community.
We're also looking for a third squad to feature during the event. If you're interested reach out! We'll be casting your streams while you play. You must be an experienced twitch streamer.
Rewards
In addition to cash prizes anyone who places in the top 10 will get this limited edition VAL skin!
Alpha Tarantula -> Squads Mode, Ballistics, Credits Screen, Youtube Player in Game
EA Mantis -> Gun Range, Melee Weapons, Killroom, Helicopters rework
EA Bull Frog -> Improved Loading times, Performance Optimizations, and better inventory management.
The big focus for this patch has been performance improvements, loading times and better inventory management. We've heard everyone's complaints and we've worked rigorously the past two weeks to make Virtual Battlegrounds more accessible.
Improved Loading Times
We know this isn't the most exciting "feature" for most of you but it was a huge technical accomplishment for our team and it was our biggest focus this patch.
Now the entire game loads into ram at game start. Once the initial load is finished hopping in and out of a match is easy. Expect between 5-10 seconds of load time between matches whether or not you're on an SSD or HDD! We even added a replay button that pops up after matches so you can quickly hop back into another game.
Floating Backpack Option
One of the big complaints we've heard people say during the course of Early Access is the difficulty of using their backpack and equipment. We've done a few things including adding the option of a floating backpack to make their gameplay more fluid. Additionally we've prioritized grabbing items off of the players body over items on the ground and walls. We've had several users complain they are having trouble putting things on and off their body. Lastly we've also increased the range at which items can grab and snap back to your body. We're curious to see what you all think.
Season One
With BullFrog starting now that means it's getting closer for us to start season one. Once we've polished the game some more this month we're going to drop a big update next month to start season one. Get ready!
The votes are in and here are our plans we've got for season one!
More guns
Grenades
New Map location
Air Drops
Downed Squad Mates
Unlockable Skins
Tournaments / Events
We'll update the voting board once season one drops.
Reminder to that at the end of each season the top 10 squads / ranked players will all receive a special skin. The top 20-30% of players will also receive a special skin.
The Future
Lastly a few people seemed to doubt us when we showed that screenshot of our long term goal for the map. So here's some actual first person footage from atop of Mount Ostenbirk of what that terrain might end up looking like.
Complete Patch Notes
New Features
Rebuilt loading system. Game all gets loaded into ram on launch and stays in ram. Can hop in and out of matches in about 5-10 seconds whether or not you're on an SSD or HDD.
Added a replay game button as well to make hopping back into matches quick and easy.
New option to allow backpack to float in front of you when you release it. Ideally this should make backpacks easier to use with attachments.
Design Changes
Jukebox shuffles playlist on load. RIP YUKI.
Suppressors now add 5% increased meters per second velocity and 5% increased damage.
Reduced audio range of zip-lines from 150M -> 100M.
Pistols can now use holo + red dot sights.
Quality of Life Changes
Performance improvements across the board. 30% gains.
STEAMVR throwing physics improved.
Backpack should be easier to grab in crouch, prone and standing states.
Weapon spawns should be more consistent. Need more verification on this from users.
Can see total number of players in lobby.
Can grab backpack items by pointing at them or putting your hand over them.
Made it easier to grab and remove stuff from your body / belt.
Made the belt / body items a higher priority for grabbing then walls and things on the floor.
More consistent leader-board results.
More consistent weapon spawning.
Bug Fixes
Fixed not being able to see 4 digit rankings on leader-boards in lobby.
Fixed 3rd squad-mate icon being off.
Fixed helicopters sometimes freezing in the sky.
Fixed the guns UI, BELTUI, and left / right eye render not saving between scenes.
Less black screening between matches.
Should see ELO changes taking place more consistently now. You can also lose elo now. Buckle up everyone above 2K.
New known issues that will be resolved soon.
Weapons floating above their spawn points occasionally
Temporarily disabled tutorial
Lastly, we have a stream planned for tonight 5/8/2/2020 at 7PM EST! We'll upload the video here afterwords in case you miss it.
This post. We want to go over two things with you today #1 our plans for EA, seasons, vehicles, more guns, more map locations, tournaments etc! And #2 talk about our patch today and review launch week.
To the people that had bugs/fps issues on launch week. To be frank, we dropped with a lot more new and unexpected issues. We want to sincerely apologize to anyone that experienced any major bugs or performance issues during launch week. But there's good news! We've DEMOLISHED a ton of the bugs and performance issues people have been reporting and we also fixed a bunch of player exploits like levitating and wall clipping. Honestly without the support from everyone during EA though critical and positive it would have been so much harder for us to make the huge strides we did this week. It's obvious people love the core of our game. We only expect to go up from here.
Here's a full list of performance fixes, bug fixes, and new features we've added since last weds.
==Performance Fixes==
Substantially decreased net lag
Significantly Increased performance for all steamVR users
Performance improvements in matches with a high number of players
GC Allocation improvements to reduce memory usage over time
Better Error handling and logging in key places
Spent magazines are now being properly destroyed to reduce resource usage
Performance fixes related to certain objects not setting properly on game start resulting in issues with main game play loop
There's still a remaining "stuttering" issue we've noticed affects something like 1/20 players. We plan on having this resolved ASAP.
==General Fixes==
Players are less likely to spawn outside of the helicopter
Fixed black screen load bug when spawning in the helicopter
Fixed exploit where players could bring weapons into the helicopter from killroom
Weapons are more likely to spawn
Fixed an exploit for becoming a spectator before the game started
Fixed an exploit for artificially increasing your height making you levitate
Fixed 4 digit leader board numbers not displaying properly
Fixed an exploit where users could artificially increase there rank
Fixed a bug where players would start the game in a swimming state
Fixed a bug where the game would not start and a lobby would break
Fixed a bug where head IK's were looking down
Fixed a bug where mag / pistols get moved when adjusting height
Fixed jukebox in pre-match lobby
Fixed VFX lagging behind guns
Fixed LIV not working for some players
Fixed voting board not visually updating properly
Fixed a bug where voting board would say squads mode when it was actually in solos mode
Fixed a bug where players could become invincible at the end of a match
Fixed bug where rank would be off by one
Fixed exploit where users get multiple victories in one victory giving them outrageous scores
Fix body moving exploit from climbing to not climbing to prevent people leaving helicopter early
Fix displaying wrong rank
Added golden skin
Fixed swimming not working properly
Apples now get fully eaten when you bite them
Fixed icons above everyone heads when pre-joining
Fixed a bug where people were looking at you while there IK's animated looking the other way
Fixed an issue that was causing people's pelvis to feel off center.
Fixed Throwing Knives, now deal damage
Fixed being able to accidentally stab yourself with a knife
Fixed Knife not being able to damage bots and target dummies
==Design Changes==
Reduced the distance that ziplines can be heard from (200m -> 100m)
Reduced the distance that breakable glass can be heard from (150m -> 75m)
Seated mode movement repositioning now lerps (This also fixes some clipping exploits)
Made it easier to grab your backpack and holster items especially when crouching
Increased knife damage from RANGE (25-100) to -> (35-100). It deals more damage based on how fast you swing.
Increased Knife minimum damage from (25-100) to (35-100).
Knife deals damage based on how fast the player swings
Updated the visuals of the zone.
Made it easier to grab items off your body
Additionally we wanted to share with you the core weapon stats and player stats so that you guys have a point of reference going forward. NOTE we will be balancing all of these in the future.
All weapons have a minimum amount of damage they deal and then they begin to lose damage as the projectiles closes in on its effective range up to a minimum amount. This distance is varied a lot from gun to gun.
MKR Max Damage 52 Min Damage 35 Automatic RPM 600 Bullet Velocity 710MPS Effective Range 500Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic / Fully-Automatic
AMRa1 .50 BMG Max Damage 180 Min Damage 130 Bullet Velocity 1219MPS Effective Range 1200Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic
Samuel 1191 Max Damage 39 Min Damage 30 Bullet Velocity 274MPS Effective Range 200Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic
SAP22 Max Damage 25 Min Dmage 20 Full Automatic RPM 1000 Bullet Velocity 260MPS Effective Range 200Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic / Fully-Automatic
SI-16 Max Damage 42 Min Dmage 30 Full Automatic RPM 937 Bullet Velocity 900 Meters Per Second Effective Range 800 Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic / Burst-Fire
TRS-18 Max Damage 42 Min Dmage 30 Full Automatic RPM 900 Bullet Velocity 900 Meters Per Second Effective Range 800 Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic / Fully-Automatic
AP5a2 Max Damage 32 Min Dmage 20 Full Automatic RPM 800 Bullet Velocity 375 Meters Per Second Effective Range 300 Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic / Fully-Automatic
SUSR-63 Max Damage 130 Min Dmage 80 Bullet Velocity 950 Meters Per Second Effective Range 900 Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic
UAP9 Max Damage 34 Min Dmage 22 Full Automatic RPM 650 Bullet Velocity 400 Meters Per Second Effective Range 320 Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic / Fully-Automatic
SIP9 Max Damage 27 Min Dmage 20 Full Automatic RPM 650 Bullet Velocity 275 Meters Per Second Effective Range 200 Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic
RDI Max Damage 32 Min Dmage 20 Full Automatic RPM 1200 Bullet Velocity 370 Meters Per Second Effective Range 300 Meters Firing Modes: Semi-Automatic / Fully-Automatic
==Minor Features==
Added Version mismatch check. Players on different versions can no longer join each other
Added a "Dev Notes" window inside elevator to address main concerns brought up by the community
Added smooth lerping to seated mode
Road Map
Now for the fun part! We have a ton of stuff planned guys. Please view our FULL roadmap online here.
Performance While we feel confident that we have improved performance across the board since launch. Our primary concern is making sure that a majority if not all performance issues are addressed before we begin work on adding new content. We want to make sure that all players are able to enjoy the game and bring them along so they don't miss the launch of major updates due to performance issues.
Load Times Following performance fixes, we will follow that up with streamlining the game to improve load times. We have an idea that should virtually reduce all load times down to a couple of seconds after the first load into the "Robot Lobby" Creating a seamless experience making it really easy to replay games quickly and easily regardless if you're on an HDD or SSD.
Grenades and more weapons Our first new weapon to be added to the game will take the form of grenades. This will make for more indirect ways for taking out players that are using cover or in hard to approach areas.
More Weapons Details to be announced soon. We don't wait to spoil it until you guys see it.
Season One Here's the really BIG thing we'll be doing. And we'll be doing seasonal updates regularly as the game progresses toward exiting EA. With Season One we'll be resetting the leaderboard and pushing for a competitive season.
The votes are in! And here is our current roadmap.
Season One Features
<*>More Weapons <*>Air Drops <*>Unlock-able Skins based on level. <*>New revised map locations <*>Physics based climb jumping <*>More realistic bots <*>Down State for squadmates <*>More finger gestures <*>Top 10 players in solos and squads will each receive a special "Top Ranking skin" for there respective division at the end of the season. <*>Top 20% of players will receive a special "high achiever skin" at the end of the season.
<*>More Drones <*>Armor <*>Modding Support <*>New Maps <*>Nighttime mode <*>Tournaments / Events <*>Quest Support <*>Your ideas! Join our Discord and tell them them to us.
Just to give you guys an idea of how serious we are take a look at this.
Here's our map as it is today.
And here's the map we had planned to use for VBG. It's several times larger.
We chose to go with the first map not because we wanted to go small persay but because the larger map wasn't as "fun" with 20~ players. People spent most of there time searching for other people instead of battling, it created a pretty dull experience that involved a lot of wait time. But damn was it cool to look around and see that giant world.
We're not promising this BUT we do want to go bigger, and really the only way to go bigger is to get more players and improve the games core. We know our game is early right now, we know it needs a lot of work but the foundation is there and it's fun as is. There isn't a better way for us to make this a 100 person VR battle royale game one day then to work with our community in EA in our opinion. That's what we're doing now. Like I said we can't promise that it really depends on how the future goes but I promise we'll try our best to make that a reality.
We're going over roadmap on Twitch now! Ask us anything!
Here's our first big patch update that release today with Early Access! Expect us to be hot-fixing and update the game daily / weekly for at least the next month. After that we'll probably roll into an official update schedule.
New Helicopter
We've replaced the old helicopter with a model that is similar to an Osprey!
Killroom
In an attempt to make waiting for a match more fun, we've built a killroom to kill some time and your friends before the game starts.
Cross Platform Leaderboards
We know that the VR userbase is split up between Steam + Oculus. These players should be able to compete with one another, because of that we've rebuilt the leaderboard system to support cross-platform competition and multiplayer.
Voting Board
Players can now vote for the favorite features they want! We want to work our community to help us design the best VR BR that we can throughout the early access process.
Full list of notable changes.
Full Patch Notes **Mantis EA 0.6.2.0**
New Features: Added a Voting Board within the game for EA where you can vote for game features for us to add Added a new helicopter Added a killroom Added cross-platform leaderboard support. Accounts automagically sync with Steam + Oculus platforms Added Vive Cosmos HMD support
Bug Fixes: Fixed Liv not working correctly Fixed a bug where you could spawn out of the helicopter Fixed gunstock settings not saving between rounds Fixed gunstock weapon smoothing not working correctly Fixed a bug where you could clip through the terrain Fixed a bug where some players would not receive an ELO update at the end of the game Fixed a bug where bots would sometimes not spawn in BOT games Fixed a bug where squad icons would sometimes persist after entering solos mode
Quality of Life Changes: Improved games overall performance by about 30% Added new super low game settings for people with older machines Seperated squads elo from solos elo Increased AK recoil Decreased MK18 and M16 recoil Made Sam the robot louder in the tutorial Added head collision.
VIRTUAL BATTLEGROUNDS RELEASES ON STEAM!
Climb anything, blind fire corners, dual wield weapons, master melee combat, slide to cover, zipline across the map… it’s something special as a large scale multiplayer shooter in the dawning age of VR multiplayer FPS.
Limited Time Release Discount, get good in the new CQC Arena or four other training areas, private lobbies available to all, new Leaderboards and ELO Ratings, load up in the new tiltrotor aircraft, and shoot it out across the 4 square KM map optimized to run ~20% faster than the Beta.
What's considered mastery of Battle Royale in VR? Enter the Virtual Battlegrounds today and see if you got what it takes.
VR BR in 30 Seconds: [previewyoutube="uLSE1E-pkrg;full"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLSE1E-pkrg[/previewyoutube]
Slap fights, throwing knives, magical apples, physical locomotion, full LIV and MR support, solos & squads PvP, and solo and co-op PvE. VBG has got you covered.
Three years of iteration means nearly every VR option on the market is natively supported in game.
System Support: Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest (with Link Cable), Vive, WMR, Valve Index. Massive amounts of customization for the supported headsets, support for gunstocks, haptic feedback, LIV, MR, OpenVR, SteamVR, and OculusVR.
Join the Dev Team in games and in Discord on the 15th and through the weekend! https://playvbg.com/discord
Celebrate Virtual Battlegrounds Launch Day and play with the dev team!
Launch day with the devs
Time Wed Apr 15th, 2020 @ 6:00 PM EDT
Permanent Discord Link https://discord.gg/tNwTx3g
Drop in and chat with us in Discord any time.
Another event is planned for 9PM PDT for the NA West Coast gamers!
Virtual Battlegrounds Status Update
We’ve been through the 36 hour Open Beta and made some great memories here with the first large scale event for Virtual Battlegrounds. The last VICTORY was won, the lights went dim, and the Virtual Battlegrounds Open Beta comes to a close… with ragesaq still on the server.
The feedback was immeasurably valuable, those who joined us in Discord can already see the bug fixes, tweaks added, and improvements made in rapid succession during this event.
And with that being said I have some unfortunate news. Because of the current situation with this pandemic some of our partners are working from home and have been unable to complete some required steps that have to be done before we’re able to release tomorrow.
Because of that we have to postpone our release date until further notice. ATM our target is April 15th, we believe that this date is attainable but it's currently out of our hands. If things go well we can possibly release sooner.
The week post-launch, we scheduled a rapid bug fixing sprint, and this will continue as scheduled, it's just been spread out through a two week period. Within a week of launch we'll be back on our schedule for Early Access development, we'll be hunkered down at home working on the game.
Thank you for your patience Warriors. We look forward to seeing you all on the battlefield again soon.
In the meantime you can watch some of our friends playing the game from the event!
